khaled esguerra


art
  1. Heritage Legacy Authentic(2025)
  2. attempt: 20250629_01(2025)
  3. on (in)visibility(2025)
  4. 1501, 308 Al Hisn St(2025)
  5. How to take Possession of what Belongs to you(2024–)
  6. Walking Around Mina(2024)
  7. Do Concrete Towers Dream Of Golden Visas?(2023—)
  8. Abu Dha-me(2022)
  9. In Absentia (Reinterpretation)(2021)
  10. I Just Need to
    Keep Moving    (2021)

design
  1. MAGHRAS: A Farm for Experimentation(2025)
  2. Abu Dhabi (Dis)connected(2025)
  3. MINA MEMORY(2024—)
  4. Spaces that Remain(2024)
  5. Nesmah(2024)
  6. AUS Posters(2023-2024)
  7. MAQAM: Hashel Al Lamki(2023)
  8. Sweating Assets: On
    Climate Conditioning
    and Ecology    (2023)
  9. REEL PALESTINE at Bait
    Al Shamsi    (2023)
  10. BED SPACE AVAILABLE(2022) 
  11. Migrant Journal(2022)


about
  1. artist+educator+designer
  2. BSc visual communication @ AUS
  3. from+based in abu dhabi 
  4. CV available upon request

let’s work →

3. on (in)visibility


            Carbon paper on printed matte paper, mounted on plywood board (65x90cm each), 2025 “on (in)visibility” explores normative research methodologies in ‘investigating the other’. Over the course of March—April 2025, Manal and I attempted to interview uniformed workers across the UAE – some resisted, others declined. The outcome, the presented works, offer reflexive field notes on the anti-interview; on transparency vs. opacity.
        To access the field notes, audiences engage in an act of excavation that, soon thereafter, devolves into an act of destruction: the field notes remain elusive and illegible, decaying and fossilising over the course of the Youth Takeover through human and environmental intervention. Like uniforms, the carbon paper serves as concealment, a technology of anonymity and opacity that eludes understanding and resists disclosure. By questioning the audience’s “right” to access our story, this work challenges extractive and pr(e)ying practices that mediate how we entitle ourselves to the lives of Gulf immigrants and our supposed “right” to their interiority.
     
       Elements of this work were inspired by collaborations between myself and Maitha Ali in 2024. This piece was done in collaboration with Manal Nadeem and commissioned by Art Jameel for the Youth Takeover 2025 exhibition titled “Spoon Spade Shovel”. Photo credits for #2–5: Courtesy of Art Jameel. Photos by Kristina Sergeeva from Seeing Things.