50 Years of Cool

Hussain AlMoosawi is an Emirati designer, photographer, and storyteller whose work centres on documenting and interpreting the UAE's urban and architectural identity. Working at the intersection of visual research and image-making, his practice is driven by a sustained inquiry into why cities look the way they do, making him as a leading voice in the visual study of the UAE's built environment.

His years living abroad exposed him to cities with layered urban histories, enriching his sensitivity to detail and sharpening his ability to read the visual language of place. This experience continues to inform a practice that approaches the city as both subject and system, where even its smallest elements carry cultural, social, and historical meaning.

At the core of his practice is Facade to Facade, an ongoing long-term project that examines buildings across the UAE through a consistent vantage point. By isolating facades as a shared surface between the private and the public, the project constructs a growing visual archive that reflects the country's heterogeneous architectural identity. Sitting between artistic expression and architectural research, it proposes a method of seeing that is both systematic and open-ended.

Across his broader body of work, recurring typological studies from infrastructure and signage to overlooked urban details form a larger investigation into how cities communicate. In this sense, his practice operates with the rigour of a typologist and the curiosity of a visual anthropologist, observing how meaning is embedded, repeated, and transformed within the built environment.

His work extends across editorial, cultural, and research-driven contexts, contributing to a wider conversation on how the UAE is documented, understood, and represented—both locally and internationally.

Ahmed Al Kuwaiti is a UAE-based Bahraini storyteller and visual artist who looks to family for inspiration, his work rooted in celebrating what we have left behind. His primary mediums are film and photography.

Following his passion for film, art, cultures and media, Ahmed moved to the UAE in 2013 and completed a bachelor's degree in Communication and Information Studies: Digital Production and Storytelling, alongside a minor in Middle Eastern Studies, at the American University in Dubai and the Mohamed Bin Rashid School for Communication. He takes pride in his Arabic identity and in nostalgic, forgotten stories, which inspire his projects documenting everyday life — especially through street photography.

Augustine Paredes is a multidisciplinary artist questioning what it means to desire in the light of love, loss, and longing. He also works as a commercial photographer and is represented by Dubai-based agency Seeing Things.

His fellowships and residencies include the Royal Commission of AlUla Artist Residency (2022), the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, Cohort 8 (2021), Warehouse 421 x Gulf Photo Plus (2020), and Campus Art Dubai 7.0 (2019). As an independent publisher he has authored four art books: Conversations at the end of the universe (2020), Long Night Stands With Lonely, Lonely Boys (2021), Happy To Be Here To Be Happy (2022), and The Bitter Taste of Sweetness (2023).

Fatema Al Fardan is an artist committed to seeing the world with curiosity and care. Driven by inquiry, her practice is facilitated through research.

Al Fardan is currently a Resident Artist at the Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi (2022–23) and a Kawader Research Fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi. She was granted the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (2021–22) and was selected for the 421 x Gulf Photo Plus Artistic Development Program (2020–21). Al Fardan likes to hear stories more than she likes to tell them.