Nahla Tabbaa is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores tensions between the urban and the organic, the beautiful and the grotesque. She is drawn to materials that have the agency to self organize, adventuring into immateriality, magic and alchemy. Her methods are intentionally slow-paced, meditative and labour-intensive and permeate strands of her everyday life to heal and harmonise her otherwise fast-paced life. As an act of resistance, she leans into alternative constructs of time and ancient practices as a way to summon magic in the mundane everyday. She sees our present state as a catastrophic dystopian world that can no longer be dismantled with human hands, but rather, she is seeking wisdom in the more-than-human world. Through working with invasive and indigenous plants, plant medicine, hiking, animal care and reading into regional mythology and folklore, her work moves towards a place where she can propose a new system of radical care and the sacred.Tabbaa grew up among and has worked on many gardens throughout her life and career. She sees these gardens as teachers- where their micro-seasons, produce, more-than-humanness, nurture and scarcity have truly shaped how she views the world and how she wants to contribute to it. Her mediums are sculpture, drawing, alchemy, research and the culinary arts. She earned her BFA in Sculpture (Central Saint Martin’s College, 2009) and Curatorial Practice (Bath School of Art and Design, 2012), she completed a culinary and farming diploma at the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, Ireland (2023). She is an alumna of Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship (2021), Campus Art Dubai (2020) and completed artist residencies with Land Art Collective (2025), The Mothership (2025), Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (2025), MMAG (2024) and Alserkal Art Foundation (2023). Her multidisciplinary works and publications have been presented at Wadi Finan Art Gallery (2025) Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (2025), MMAG (2024), Doha Design Biennial (2024), Colomboscope (2024), Alserkal Arts Foundation (2023), 421 (2022), Art Dubai (2021) and the Jameel Arts Centre (2022). She has founded and curated social pedagogical projects including Orraisse (2024-present), Rewilding The Kitchen (2021- present), The Alchemy of Dyeing (2020-2023) and Daftar Asfar (2017-2022). In the culinary world she has led performance dinners, research and explorations at 421, Al Serkal Avenue, Salon Art Dubai, Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, Colomboscope, Indus Conclave, Livinc, Mujeb Farms, Myocum and Amman Design Week, and has curatedSufrawith Frying Pan Adventures andRewilding the Kitchenwith Al Serkal Online. She has published recipes which have featured in Khunfus, EastEast Magazine, The Confused Arab, Deep Fried and Attempting Abla Nazira.Nahla is currently based between Amman and Dubai.
Nahla Tabaa
Multidisciplinary Designer | Amman
Nahla Tabbaa. Image courtesy of the Designer
The Interview
How does your cultural or regional context influence your design work?
Any embodiment of the landscape, culture or region I see is a step towards collective liberation and decolonization.
Describe a project you're most proud of and why it's meaningful to you.
Thil:a multi piece textile sculpture shaped into a shadowy monster that spoke about grief and resistance during the genocide. It became a vessel for allowing our anger and facing it. Eventually, in Bangladesh the install was rehung and a menu titled Inside the Belly of The Beast was designed.
How do you stay inspired and continue to evolve your creative practice?
By having a multidisciplinary practice I explore multiple mediums at once: ceramics, cooking, foraging, painting, drawing.
Works
Image courtesy of the designer.
Image courtesy of the designer.
Website
www.nahlatabbaa.studio
Socials
@nahlatabbaa