Hassan Sharif (1951–2016) was born in Bandar Lengeh, Iran and lived and worked in Dubai. Recognized as a pioneer of conceptual art and experimental practice in the Middle East, Sharif's artworks surpass the limits of any single discipline, encompassing performance, installation, drawing, painting, and assemblage. Beginning in the late 1970s, he worked as a cultural producer and facilitator, moving between roles as artist, educator, critic, activist, and mentor to contemporary artists in the United Arab Emirates.

After familiarizing himself with the ideas of Dada and Fluxus art during his studies in the early 1980s at Byam Shaw School of Art in London (now Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design), Sharif created performance-based works that engaged with repetition, landscape, and the body. Sharif first incorporated weaving into his art making process as a part of his Objects series (1982–2016) as a means of critically exploring the increasing modernization and industrialization occurring in the U.A.E.

An acute awareness of his environment led Sharif to embrace constant experimentation and a variety of materials. In his body of work focused on experiments and semi-systems, he utilized the grid to draft constructivist structures. Sharif aimed to create art that was linked to society and spoke to universal aspects of daily life, using everyday objects to critically reflect contemporary concerns such as consumerism, manufacturing, and the commercialization of handicrafts.

Hassan Sharif’s work was recently featured in a two-person exhibition, The Art Library: Manal AlDowayan and Hassan Sharif, at Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Hassan Sharif: Woven, a publication released in both Arabic and English, was published on occasion of the show (2023). The artist’s work was the subject of a 2017 retrospective, Hassan Sharif: I Am The Single Work Artist, curated by Hoor Al Qasimi at the Sharjah Art Foundation, which traveled to the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2020); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2020); and the The Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporaine de Saint-Étienne Métropole (MAMC+), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France (2021).