Edge of a Non-Dream
On a hot July morning in 1987, my mother awoke from a nightmare to find her favorite doll, Najla, standing at the foot of her bed with a broken leg and one arm lifted, as if it were pointing at her. The “Edge of a Non-Dream” series explores the tension that existed in the moment my mother realized that there was perhaps something unsettling about her love of dolls. This series interrogates our unique (and at times, uncanny) relationships with inanimate objects of play as they are passed down or gifted from mother to child.
Shamma Al Bastaki is a poet and artist from Dubai who graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi with a double major in Sociology & Public Policy and Literature & Creative Writing. She has served as an Ambassador for the Louvre Abu Dhabi since 2015 and was part of the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship. Shamma is the 2019 winner of the ADMAF Creativity Award for her ethno-poetry collection ‘House to House |بيت لبيت’, an excerpt of which was published in the Asymptote Journal and taught in universities and schools in Japan, the U.S., and the UAE. As a poet, she has been commissioned by Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE Unlimited, Mubadala, and the Minister of Tolerance, and has had a special feature on CNN. She has performed her work on various local and international events and served on the curatorial committee of Hekayah for two years. Shamma is co-founder of JARA Collective, a chapbook poetry press; a founding member of Untitled Chapters, a literary group for women writers; and an inaugural member of the Cultural Office Women’s Creative Network launched by H.H. Sheikha Manal Bint Monammed Bin Rashed Al Maktoum. With her research on hydrophobic sand, she was the first Emirati to win at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Los Angeles. She recently joined Qasr Al Hosn – DCT as an Education Specialist.