Forward_Moves

[FROM THE VAULT] is the summer series where we go back to some episodes that marked the past 3 seasons.

In this episode Raja sat down in Paris with Bady Dalloul—French-Syrian multimedia artist whose work spans drawing, collage, objects, and installation—to trace a practice built on imaginary nations, miniature archives, and the deliberate blurring of fact and fiction. From inventing fictional countries with his brother during summers vacationing in Damascus when they were young, to a lesson in Byzantine art history that cracked open everything he thought he knew about who gets to tell the story, Bady's work is less about documenting history and more about exposing how it's made. 

This episode outlines what it means to make work that protects the people whose stories it carries—and why, for Bady, working small is never a limitation. It's an invitation. 

Connect with Bady Dalloul 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badydalloul/ 
Website: https://thethirdline.com/artists/79-bady-dalloul/ 

Connect with Raja Haddad | Forward_Moves 
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forward_moves/ 
Twitter/X: https://x.com/forward_moovz
Raja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/octoraj/ 

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[FROM THE VAULT] is the summer series where we go back to some episodes that marked the past 3 seasons.

In this episode Raja sits down in Paris with Salma Mousfi—the Lebanese singer whose voice became inseparable from Ziad Rahbani’s legacy through the cult classic album Monodose— to trace a life that refuses to hold still. 

Salma didn’t plan to become a central figure of Middle Eastern avant-
garde music. She was just a teenager who had to sing to exist. What
followed—a decade-long collaboration with Ziad Rahbani, years of
stepping away from the spotlight to raise children and run a shop in
Grasse, a pivot to jewelry design in Paris, and now a return to the stage
with a tribute to the mentor she lost—reads less like a career and more
like a life fully inhabited.

This conversation explores what it means to carry a legacy without being
crushed by it. It’s about the politics of being a Lebanese woman expat
who reinvents herself not by choice but by circumstance. And about why Salma believes every musician who ever played with Ziad owes it to him to perform his music live.

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[FROM THE VAULT] is the summer series where we go back to some episodes that marked the past 3 seasons.

In this episode of Forward_Moves, host Raja Haddad sits down with Chef Ahmad Halawa, the Palestinian culinary artist bringing people together—one plate at a time.

From childhood memories in his family kitchen to launching a supper club in Dubai, Ahmad shares how food became his way of preserving culture, connecting communities, and telling stories that words sometimes can’t.

📌 This is more than a conversation about food—it’s about home, legacy, and why a good dish sometimes just needs to hug you.

🎧 Now on YouTube & all major podcast platforms.

Follow us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forward_moves/ 
X: https://x.com/forward_moovz 
Raja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/octoraj/ 
Follow Ahmad: https://www.instagram.com/chefhalawa 

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[FROM THE VAULT] is the summer series where we go back to some episodes that marked the past 3 seasons.

In this episode form 2025 Raja Haddad is joined by Zain Masud, a London-trained art world professional turned landscape designer, who is reshaping how we experience space, memory, and nature in the Middle East.

🎙️We explore:

- Zain’s journey from the global art scene to land-based design in the Arab world

- Why she views nature as storytelling—and gardens as living archives

- How beauty, emotion, and identity are layered into space

- Designing spaces that heal, include, and speak to a deeper sense of belonging

- Letting go of perfection and trusting the process of reinvention

🌱 This is an episode about starting over, looking inward, and designing spaces that feel like home.

👉 Watch the full episode now on YouTube, or tune in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. 

Follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forward_moves/ 

X: https://x.com/forward_moovz 

Lina’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lina_movements/ 

Raja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/octoraj/ 

Follow Zain: https://www.instagram.com/zainmasud/?hl=en 

Follow Zain’s Studio: https://www.instagram.com/studiozainmasud/ 

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[FROM THE VAULT] is the summer series where we go back to some episodes that marked the past 3 seasons.

In this episode  Chef Bader Najeeb, Emirati pastry chef, chocolatier, and founder of Burnt Orange, sits down with Raja for a deliciously honest conversation about baking, identity, and doing what truly moves you.

From making fondant in his childhood kitchen to opening one of Dubai’s most soulful cafés, Bader shares how desserts became his language for storytelling, for self-expression, and for staying true to his roots.

📌 Whether you're a foodie, creative, or founder, this is your reminder that the best things come when you follow what actually matters to you.

🎧 Watch now on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

#Forward_Moves #ChefBaderNajeeb #BurntOrangeDXB #CulinaryCreativity #EmiratiVoices #Chocolatier #Foody #Chef #EmiratiChef #DubaiCafes #MiddleEastCreatives #dubai #abudhabi #mydubai #dubailife #inspiration #uaefood #followforfollow #chocolatechefb #burntorangechocolatier

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X: https://x.com/forward_moovz 
Lina’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lina_movements/ 
Raja’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/octoraj/ 
Follow Chef Bader: https://www.instagram.com/chef.b/?hl=en
Follow Burnt Orange: https://www.instagram.com/burntorangechocolatier/?hl=en 

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[FROM THE VAULT] is the summer series where we go back to some episodes that marked the past 3 seasons, and as we prepare to launch season 4.

In this episode, Dubai based photographer Natalya Urmanova, shares thoughts about fear, reinvention, and the art of seeing beyond the surface. 

Raised around her father’s darkroom and shaped by 15 years in luxury fashion, Natalya shares how she walked away from the corporate world with “shaking legs,” only to discover photography as a portal into a parallel world — one where she could finally live, feel, and create freely.

Known for her cinematic black-and-white portraits, Natalya speaks about photographing essence rather than faces, why she builds meticulous visual worlds only to surrender to spontaneity, and how fear often signals forward motion. From her first exhibition — and the vulnerability behind it — to why she believes in never “staying in yesterday,” this episode is a powerful reflection on creativity, courage, and choosing honesty over certainty. 

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Forward Moves for conversations shaping the creative economy in the Middle East and beyond. 
🔗 Connect with Natalya Urmanova Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urmanova_imagery Website: https://www.urmanovaimagery.com 
🔗 Follow Forward Moves YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forward_moves X / Twitter: https://x.com/forward_moovz Raja Haddad: https://www.instagram.com/octoraj 

📌 PINNED COMMENT Natalya says: “The fear of staying was much bigger than the fear of leaving.” 

What’s something you’ve felt called to walk away from — even without knowing what comes next? Share your thoughts below . If this conversation resonated, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share the episode with someone navigating their own creative leap. 

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The word mentor arrives with a very specific image. 

Teacher and student. Expert and apprentice. 

The knowledge moves in one direction — from the one who has it to the one who doesn't yet. It is a reassuring image. It implies order. It implies that wisdom has a clear address and can be reliably delivered.

The problem is that it bears almost no resemblance to how creative knowledge actually travels. The sensibility, the instinct These do not transfer through programs or pairings or quarterly check-ins. 

They have to be absorbed. Often sideways. Often from sources the recipient didn't recognise as teachers at the time.

In this  episode of the Forward_Moves Recap Series, four guests describe their most formative transmissions — none of which looked anything like the conventional image. One learned from a house. One from a rejection. One from a single conversation with a stranger in New York. One from a father who gave her everything except formal instruction. And what connects all four stories is this: the most important thing they received was not knowledge in the form of information. It was permission.

Voices in This Episode

Naz Gibril  —  British-Libyan fashion and luxury strategist

 Mishari Al-Nassar  —  Kuwaiti interior architect and designer

 Asmaa Shabibi  —  Co-founder of Lawrie Shabibi gallery in Dubai

 Natalya Urmanova  —  Dubai-based photographer 

Chapters

03:49  Naz Gibril on where mentorship actually matters most

06:38 Mishari Al-Nassar on his grandfather's legacy

09:59  Asmaa Shabibi on the New York collector who changed everything

13:39 Natalya Urmanova on her subjects and her role

17:30  Raja's eight-episode recap: eight threads across thirty-eight conversations

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There is a distinction at the heart of this episode that is easy to miss. The difference between making something here and making it from here. 

Making something here is a logistical fact: the geography is incidental, the work could have come from anywhere. Making it from here is entirely something else. 

It means the work carries the region inside it: the specific freedom of a city with no inherited idea of what you're supposed to be, the specific weight of building in a place that is simultaneously ancient and still becoming.

This episode does not celebrate the outcomes, the awards, the exhibitions, the international recognition. It sits with the specific conditions that shaped the work. The cost of insisting on where you come from when the market rewards you more generously for smoothing it out. The permission that didn't exist until someone built anyway. The honest negotiation between the full version of who you are and the version that travels more easily.

Five guests, five disciplines, one thread: the region is not a backdrop to the work. It is inside the work.

El Seed  —  Paris-born Tunisian artist 

Sumayya Dabbagh  —  Saudi architect  

Badr Najeeb  —  Emirati pastry chef and chocolatier

 Mariam Yehia  —  Egyptian-French fashion designer and founder of Mrs Keepa,  

Amad Mian  —  Co-founder of Dastaangoi, a Dubai-based luxury fragrance house 

Chapters

00:00 Intro

03:43 ElSeed on Arabic calligraphy as a bridge

05:47 Sumatra Dabbagh on her return

07:52 Badr Najeeb on the societal challenge

10:11 Mariam Yehia on being an Egyptian fashion designer

12:58 Amad Mian on the shift 

13:58 Closing remarks 

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The algorithm rewards the new, the rapid, the instantly shareable. 

Brands need to go viral. Artists need to build audiences in months. Restaurants need to trend or they're written off. The entire vocabulary of ambition is built around the idea that if it's not happening fast, it's not happening at all.

And yet, across three seasons of Forward_Moves, the people who built the things that genuinely matter described almost none of it quickly. 

Almost all of them went through the same journey: doing the work without being sure it was actually working. The durability of what they built is directly related to the time they spent inside it.

This episode is about that time. About what depth actually produces that speed cannot. About mastery as a daily decision, not a destination. And about the part of creative practice that never appears in any portfolio — the silent processing that happens not while you are working on the project, but in the hours around it.

Voices in This Episode

 Mohamed Maktabi  —  CEO of Iwan Maktabi, 

Hani AlMalki  —  Dubai-based food writer and curator known as Bedouin Foodie. 

Anthony Maalouf  —  Lebanese architect.

Nada Debs  —  Designer and founder of Studio Nada Debs

Omar Al-Gurk  —  Emirati designer, architect, and photographer, founder of Modu Method. 

Zain Massoud  —  Landscape designer

Chapters

00:00  Intro 

02:30  Mohamed Maktabi on his Sufi mentor's lesson

05:09  Hani AlMalki on keeping it real

06:20  Hani on the shortcuts

07:51  Anthony Maalouf on the word ostentatious.

09:29  Nada Debs on intuition

10:52  Omar Al-Gurk on pottery as self-knowledge

12:25  Omar Al-Gurk on boredom as creative methodology

14:48  Zain Massoud

15:10  Closing comments

"It's a career that you can continue indefinitely. You only get better."

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On creativity as resistance — and why making something from where you come from is never entirely innocent

There is a word Raja was initially hesitant to use in this episode. 

The word is resistance. 

Not the confrontational kind — not the kind that announces itself. The quieter kind: the insistence on being seen, on telling your own story rather than having it told for you, the daily decision to make something from where you come from, knowing that in the current climate that act carries weight whether you intend it to or not.

None of the guests in this episode frame their work as resistance. A supper club, a jewellery collection, a gallery, an online radio station, a sound art practice, a restaurant. None of them look the same. All of them function as exactly that — evidence of a culture that is richer and more complex than prevailing narratives tend to allow.

The episode's central argument: when you argue with the wrong story, you feed it. When you replace it — when you produce something so true and so full of life that the wrong story becomes less credible without you ever engaging it — that is how the narrative actually shifts.

Voices in this episode

Radio Alhara  —  Palestinian online radio station founded during COVID
Ahmad Halawa  —  Palestinian chef and founder of Ysupper clubs in Dubai.
Nadine Kanso  —  Lebanese jewellery designer and founder of Bil Arabi.
Amrita Sethi  —  Sound artist and founder of Soundbite.
Sunny Rahbar  —  Co-founder of The Third Line gallery in Dubai.
Basil Yassin  —  Founder of Yava restaurant in Dubai.
Omar Al-Gurk  —  Emirati designer and founder of Modu Method.

Chapters
 
00:53  Intro 
03:08  Radio Alhara 
05:20  Ahmad Halawa on his supper clubs
06:46  Nadine Kanso on September 11th as the trigger
07:29  Raja on the broader principle
09:24  Amrita Sethi on pioneering a form that had no precedent
11:39  Sunny Rahbar on coming back
12:39  Basil Yassin 
14:13  Omar Al-Gurk on the 1960s and 70s
14:43  Closing argument

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