Milia Maroun Grouhe
LDB 2021
Milia is the designer behind Lebanon-founded womenswear label milia-m.
The work of this multi-disciplinary designer crosses the boundaries between art and fashion.
Born and brought up in Beirut, Milia Maroun studied fashion design at Esmond in Paris. Subsequently launching her own fashion label in 2000. She is a pioneering female fashion designer from the Middle East. Her latest Kimabaya exhibitions at the Museum of the Arab World's lnstitute in Paris (2016) - Amaree's in New Port Beach USA - Espace Muraille in Geneva (2017)- Nomadic Traces at the Gallery Warehouse 427 Abu Dhabi(2019)
In 2016 Milia Maroun set up a studio in the UK from where she evolves the two strands of her activity as a designer: conceptual works and limited edition Kimabayas which are sold through private exhibitions; and the perennial ready to wear Millia M collection which is sold through her web-shop.
Taher Asad Bakhtiari
Panelist 2017 & LDB 2021
Taher Asad-Bakhtiari (b. 1982, Tehran) is a self-taught artist whose practice focuses on, but is not limited to, objects, textiles and experiences. After studying multimedia and management in Canada and Switzerland, Taher opened a creative agency in Tehran and later New York City. He has developed several bodies of work including "The Tribal Weave Project", a multi-tiered and ongoing reimagination of tribal artifacts, and "recovered barrels", a metaphorical conceptualization of crude oil containers. Taher lives in Tehran.
Nawal Arafat
LDB 2021
Multidisciplinary Palestinian designer and artist. Lives and works in Jaffa, Israel.
Completed visual communication studies in 2015 at Shenkar College of Engineering & Design, and now teaches in the same faculty. Specializes in high-end print productions for the arts and cultures field.
Develops brand concepts for leading boutiques, companies, and galleries. Designs graphic identities that cover both the visual (2D) and the spatial (3D) aspects of community centers. A lecturer and workshop organizer at design events. Exhibits in several local art galleries and museums. Passionate about texts and languages.
Researches the Arabic language, its various locations, and the ways it exists in public spaces.
Most of her work involves trilingual design, striving to make connections between different societies and encourage dialogue on political and cultural issues.
Nada Debs
Panelist 2017
Nada Debs is a Lebanese designer living and working in Beirut. Her work spans scale and discipline: from product and furniture design to one-off commissions across craft, art, fashion and interiors. What ties her work together is her ability to distil culture and craftsmanship to create pieces of emotional resonance. Nada grew up in Japan, studied design at Rhode Island School of Design in the United States and has spent significant periods of time living and travelling the world, finding connections between different cultures. There is something of each of her experiences in all of her work. In essence, she captures the power of the human hand to tell stories that touch the heart. She calls her approach: hand made, heart made.
Nada believes in the importance of human stories. She places value on connections - to places, to others and to our own identity within the wider world. She is fascinated by the role of the human hand to tell stories and to evoke a sense of belonging. She describes her belief in craft as a feeling that goes beyond geography, language and culture. Geometry is an important tool for Nada, representing complex philosophies with intricate, simple beauty. She uses materials to tell tactile stories, sometimes in pure and surprising forms, and sometimes with intriguing combinations and juxtapositions. What connects her work is a belief in the power of design to cross time and border and touch us on a primal level. She believes not just in form and function, but in feeling too.
Nada brings her philosophy to life in a number of ways. Her experience as a designer gives her the language to understand how things are made and how they can be made special. She has a hands on, human approach, understanding that good relationships and a collaborative attitude are the key to achieving good results. She brings passion to process; she combines ideas, skills and techniques together from her travels, to form a unique cultural exchange. Her mission is more than simply the nostalgic preservation of time-honored traditions, it is to translate the traditional into something energetic and alive.
Khalid Shafar
Panelist 2017
Born in 1980 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. As a business graduate of the American University in Dubai Khalid worked in marketing and communication for almost seven years. In 2005 Khalid completed a degree in Fine Arts in Interior Design and by the end of 2009 had decided to leave marketing and follow his passion for design. Khalid has studied and specialized in Furniture & Objects design, first at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, UK, then at the Centre for Fine Woodworking in Nelson, New Zealand. In 2011 Khalid opened his own studio in Dubai and in Nov 2012 Khalid inaugurated his first showcase space ‘KASA’. Khalid’s approach to design encompasses his personal expression of form, movement, emotion, and in particular, ‘the tale’ of objects. Among his notable international collaborations, Khalid collaborated with the Brazilian duo Campana Brothers on an installation for Abu Dhabi Art 2010. He recently collaborated with the historical French cabinetmaker Moissonnier, with the carpet industry leader Tai Ping, with the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), with the fashion brand COS, and with the design brand Kartell on special limited edition releases.
Hagit Pincovici
Panelist 2016
Hagit Pincovici, born in Tel Aviv in 1978, belongs to the third generation of an Israeli family who dedicated since the sixties to the craft testing of materials, particularly of plexiglass. The family tradition of Hagit Pincovici evolves into a personal interpretation of design during her training in Israel at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and in her first years of work in Tel Aviv after her graduation. The following specialisation at the Domus Academy in Milan encounters her with the world of Italian artisan quality and she develops a personal research based on association between different materials and technology.
Aisha Nasser Al Sowaidi
LDB 2021
Aisha is a multidisciplinary designer based in Doha, Qatar. Her designs are an expression of a local designer towards the fast developing Qatar.
Her work incorporates old experiences and behaviours with contemporary design in objects used within the house to maintain the feeling of being home. Her work also brings the modern city closer to the home through the use of materials inspired by the city. Her designs deal with memory, nostalgia, and traces of time. She holds an MFA in Design Studies and a BA in Graphic Design.
Talia Mukmel
LDB 2021
Talia is a multidisciplinary artist and a designer. She graduated from the Industrial Design Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (2012).
These days, she is completing her Master's Degree in the faculty of Arts at Tel Aviv University.
Talia is a third-generation of a family of textile designers and manufacturers. He futher is from Bagdad and her mother from Chile. Her work is based mostly on a study of traditional crafts and advanced technological production methods. Her creations can be defined as a cultural hybridization. Talia combines present themes and symbols taken from major fields such as religion, history and culture, through which she seeks to raise questions regarding the importance of the object, the material and the life in the modern world.
Kawther Al Saffar
LDB 2021
Kuwaiti product designer, Kawther Alsaffar attained her BFA. in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design, and her MA. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London. Her work is multi-disciplinary and uses storytelling and craft to traverse the fictional lines between art and design. She focuses on finding patterns for human intimacy and truth, whether this manifests itself in finding cultural significance, integrity in materials, or creating human connections.
Kawther’s brand, Saffar, works within the local constraints of Kuwait. Through her emerging furniture design practice,Saffar aims to contribute to a worldwide conversation on the differences and importance of experience based cultural design. This is achieved by elevating and promoting the processes and skills available in Kuwait such as sand-casting and copper sinking which have been under-utilized. The products of Saffar aspire to be personally informed, locally defined and universally desirable. She focuses on developing crafts in Kuwait that aren’t favourably considered in the rest of the world, challenging the generic definition of luxury - promoting the local grittiness.
Rami Tareef
Panelist 2017
Industrial designer, design lecturer and curator Rami Tareef, who hails from a Druze family line that has lived in Northern Isreal for over 500 years, graduated the department of Industrial Design at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Israel and the ZHDK, Zurich School of Arts. In 2014 he completed Master in Industrial Design at the Bezalel Academy.
Culture researcher which seeking to formulate a new and fresh dialogue of the fascinating intercultural encounter between east and west. He explores the limits of the current discourse between craft and design, new and old, traditions and technology.
In 2020 Rami was appointed as Curator of Design and Architecture at the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem
Annabel Karim Kassar
Panelist 2016
French-born architect Annabel Karim Kassar has developed an international expertise in Architecture and Interior Design since founding her architectural practice in Paris in 1994. She now has offices in Beirut, Dubai and London. Annabel Karim Kassar has been credited with breathing new life into the Middle East’s most creative capital, Beirut. In the mid 90's, she was declared winner in a competition for the reconstruction of the city’s souks. She is also responsible for creating some of Beirut’s hottest venues, Momo at the Souks with Mourad Mazouz, Strange Fruit and Balima. She is currently working on completing major architectural projects in Lebanon and UAE among which Al Zorah pavilion, a landmark overlooking the mangrove of Ajman and winner of the German Design Council 2014 Architecture Iconic Awards, and a Golf club in Ajman. The ongoing interior projects range from hospitality to residential with : Almaz by Momo, restaurant in JBR, UAE and different interiors in Paris and London. Alongside her architectural practice, Annabel Karim Kassar has created Caï-light, a company dedicated to Lighting Design.