I’ve been thinking about the distinction between valuing and advocating for lower and middle class residents and fetishizing their spaces, objects, & ways of living in the UAE — especially Dubai neighborhoods. Turning your nose up at exclusionary spaces, like malls, I understand. Writing them off entirely by calling them…

Dubai-born artist Shazia Salam’s latest work-in-progress uses a machine, palm fronds, and Ayurvedic back oil, to meditate on labor, materials and media narratives. Machines are productive. They make things. They do things. They are built to make human lives “easier,” we are told. Some human lives. At a casual glance…

Noun: expenditure of physical or mental effort especially when difficult or compulsory. Verb: to exert one’s powers of body or mind especially with painful or strenuous effort. In the last few months, I’ve heard friends, family, and colleagues say “I asked one of the labor guys,” or “It was mostly…