Ahed
Q: Is there something about being an Emirati woman that finds its way into your work, even when you’re not consciously trying to put it there?
A: I think it finds its way into my work through the way I see rather than through what I choose to represent. Being an Emirati woman has shaped how I understand the world, how I read power, how I navigate spaces. So even when a work has nothing explicitly to do with my identity, that perspective is still somewhere within it. it’s not something I add to the work; it’s one of the places I’m looking from.
“Being an Emirati woman has shaped how I understand the world, how I read power, how I navigate spaces.”
Q: How do art and consulting influence each other in the way you think and work?
A: Being an artist has definitely made me more comfortable with ambiguity. In my practice, I’m constantly questioning, experimenting, and looking at things from different perspectives, and I think I bring that same curiosity into consulting. Consulting has influenced my art in almost the opposite way. It has made me much more structured and intentional in how I develop ideas.
So I think they challenge different sides of me. Art pushes me to question and explore, while consulting pushes me to structure and articulate. And moving between the two has made me better at both.
“Art pushes me to question and explore, while consulting pushes me to structure and articulate. And moving between the two has made me better at both.”
Q: When you were younger, how did you define a successful woman? How has that definition changed for you today?
A: When I was younger, I thought a successful woman was someone who had everything figured out. She knew exactly who she was, where she was going, and what she wanted from life. Now, I think there’s something powerful about allowing yourself not to have all the answers. Success, to me, looks like a woman who keeps evolving, who can change her mind, take an unexpected path, begin again, and become different versions of herself without feeling like she has failed the person she thought she would be.
Q: If your story could leave one thing behind for the next generation of Emirati women, what would you want it to be?
A: I’d want my story to leave behind a sense of possibility. I want the next generation of Emirati women to know that they don’t have to fit into one definition of who they should be, or choose only one path for themselves. They can be ambitious, curious, creative. I’d want them to feel that the possibilities available to them are theirs to define.
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