Ghia Haddad
Ghia Haddad is an artist based in the UAE who trained in graphic design and art history at the University of Maryland. She previously worked in corporate graphic design and spent 12 years leading public art projects with Dubai School communities. These experiences shape her current work.
She says: “While fibre arts have existed for millennia, they have historically been ranked on an inferior scale than painting and sculpture, mainly for their association with femininity and domesticity. In that way, the dismissal of crafts to a frivolous, feminine pursuit resulted in validating art with more masculine associations.”
“My work challenges this notion and my canvases portray female figures donned in textile that is jutting out of the surface of the canvas as if to say to the viewer ‘Hey! Come touch me! Come talk to me! I am here!’ I ask the question: ‘Has art ever been truly ours, as women? Do we have to reinvent it in order to claim it?”
She is currently enrolled in a two-year Master’s Programme in Museum Studies at Leicester University.