Special Event

Join us for an evening ushered by spectacles. Guided by former 421 residents UT-R Studio, Tamara Barrage, and Moza Al Mazrouei, we will journey through 421’s campus, pausing at junctures for interventions that blur the lines between spectator and spectacle, performer and viewer. These encounters invite us to reconsider how we engage with art, space, and one another.

Tamara Barrage transforms materials into corporeal, gestural sculptures that inhabit space and converse with the viewer, while Moza Al Mazrouei interrogates performance and identity. UT-R Studio leads us through site-mapping exercises that reveal the hidden rhythms and possibilities of space, process, and collaboration.

This is not a talk, and it is not spectacle for spectacle’s sake. It is an intervention (or perhaps, a contemplation) inviting audiences to negotiate artists and their practices more critically and dynamically, to engage with them, and to enter into dialogue with them.

Accessibility & Participation

A light dinner will be provided.

Open to ages 18+

Language: English with Arabic support

About the Artists

Tasnim Tinawi and Uthra Varghese met at the American University of Sharjah while pursuing their Bachelor’s degree in Architecture. Over the years they have established themselves as an artistic duo with a multidisciplinary practice called UT-R Studio. Their work investigates the multitudes in which design can elevate the relationship between cultural context and the built environment. Driven by a research-based methodology, UT-R Studio addresses pressing issues on climate change, postcolonial landscapes and gender-biased societies throughout their work. In order to do so, their work spans across the disciplines of architecture, installation, photography, product design and culinary arts. Tasnim Tinawi graduated with a degree in Architecture from the American University of Sharjah and received the Cultural Foundation Art Residency in 2021. Uthra Varghese holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the American University of Sharjah and an M.S. in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, where she was awarded the William Kinne Fellows Prize. She began pursuing culinary arts through an Alternative M.A. in Food and Art Research with the Gramounce.

Moza Almazrouei (b.2000, Dubai, UAE) uses sculpture, film, and writing as a vehicle to explore material and mineral politics embedded within urban spaces. The basis of her practice is prompted by writings of feminist geographers like Deborah Dixon and writers like Gabrielle Hechte, who use the scale of the mineral as a window to read broader regional geopolitics.

Moza Almazrouei completed her BA at the Slade School of Fine Arts in 2022 and MA in Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University in 2023. Moza received the Graham Robertson prize in 2022 and Best international documentary award at Focus Wales Film Festival in 2024.

Tamara Barrage is a Lebanese artist and designer based in Dubai, whose work navigates the boundary between design and sculpture. She holds a Master’s degree in Contextual Design from Design Academy Eindhoven and a Master’s degree in Product Design from ALBA (Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts). Tamara’s practice is deeply rooted in material exploration, where textures, forms, and experimental techniques seek to provoke senses and articulate memories. At the heart of her practice lies a curiosity about how materials can be manipulated to transcend their usual characteristics, pushing them beyond their functional origins.