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@tabari_artspace

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View: Same Air, DIFC Dubai. Est. 2003. Pioneering MENA artists.

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Naso Opinion…
Maitha Abdulla (@maithaabdalla) on Becoming Her Own Place of Return 💫

On the eve of the seventh MENART Fair in Paris, Emirati artist Maitha Abdalla became the first recipient of the Coup de Cœur Boucheron, awarded for Hug My Land, a bronze woman folded into her own arms. The work began with a simple impulse: to hold the land when it feels fragile. Somewhere in the making, the embrace turned inward. Home stopped being an address and became something the body keeps.

“This work evokes an almost bodily relationship to the land: what it transmits to us, what we project onto it, and what we continue to carry within us when we move away,” Abdalla says.

Read the full piece on Naso Art Journal. Link in bio. 🔗

—
Words by @sositto, courtesy of Naso Art Journal.
Images courtesy of @menart_fair & @bureaudescreateurs.

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This month’s I AM took us to Tabari Artspace, where Dr. Omar Kholeif guided us through his curation of Fellow Travellers. Exploring diasporic imagination, shared movement and collective memory, the exhibition examined how artists navigate history, place and the possibilities of belonging.

Curated by Nadine Khoury

I AM takes us inside the studios of artists, bringing audiences closer to the people behind the work.

Set within the spaces where ideas are formed and works come to life, each session offers an intimate encounter with an artist, their practice and the world they have built around it. Through conversation, we explore not only what they make, but how they think, what influences them and the processes that shape their work.

Away from the gallery and closer to the artist, I AM is an opportunity to experience the person, the practice and the space in which the two meet.

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#afterglow #fromtheresidueofadepartedsun runs @friezeofficial no.9 #cork street from 30 October to 22 November; Tuesday to Saturday, 10-6. Featured #TheOverlook #asecondlife by @dromarkholeif oil on linen in artist’s frame with unique poem. One of 9 paintings presented in this show in association with @tabari_artspace

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Hunna Art is delighted to share that Alymamah Rashed is among the ten artists of Layered Becoming, the first international art exhibition of Wujūd, the newly opened foundation on the shores of Ayla in Aqaba, Jordan, held under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah.

Alymamah presents two works from 2025. In When Your Light Lived Within Me, Lace Tree I to IV, four monumental charcoal drawings, each rising more than three metres, show a body that grows like a tree through intricate, lacelike lines. Its branches are at once anatomical and botanical, and the tree becomes a vessel of memory, light and spiritual presence, where inner light takes root, multiplies and reaches beyond the self.

Across the room, Pebbles From My Mountains Sing Their Spirits to Your Heart (To Be Held Eternally), a vast oil on linen, gathers stones the artist collected on the shores of Failaka Island, the beaches of Kuwait and the mountain paths of Turkey. In the studio she arranged them as though they could sing, and they became spirits. Among them rests her own body, held by the rocks as they sing their memories, livelihood and skin into the painting.

Alymamah’s practice is rooted in spiritualism. It asks how the body inhabits its surroundings, and itself, across past, present and future. In this exhibition, where place becomes presence, her work finds a fitting home.

Layered Becoming
The Moroccan Space, Marina Village, Ayla, Aqaba
Until 10 December 2026

Works courtesy of the artist and Hunna Art.

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19–22 November 2026
*Be the Stone*
Tabari at Frieze Abu Dhabi 2026

I’m pleased to announce my participation in *Be the Stone*, presented by @tabari_artspace @friezeabudhabi Frieze Abu Dhabi 2026, with my earlier work *The End of Monuments* (2015).

“And if you were not the tree, my love, then be the stone.”

وإنْ لم تَكُنْ شجراً يا حبيبي
فكُنْ حجراً مُشْبعاً بالرُطوبةِ، كُنْ حَجَرا.

Mahmoud Darwish

Tabari’s multi-artist booth brings together Egyptian artist Khaled Zaki (b. 1964, Suez), Iraqi-British artist Irene Scheinmann (b. 1933, Baghdad), and Palestinian artists Kamal Boullata (1942–2019, Jerusalem) and Hazem Harb (b. 1980, Gaza).

Taking its title from a line by Mahmoud Darwish, *Be the Stone* opens a proposition: to be the stone is a choice—a way of holding ground, remaining present, and taking form under changing conditions. It holds within it the possibility of becoming otherwise.

Hazem Harb
The End of Monuments, 2015
Oil painting and mixed media on canvas
200 × 250 cm

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A new artistic perspective unfolds at Tabari Artspace, where contemporary expression and compelling narratives invite a closer exploration of art and its many interpretations. On view until 8 January 2027.

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#studiovisit with @tabari_artspace and @levin.haegele #linkinbio.

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Working across contemporary art, literature and cultural criticism, @dromarkholeif has established a distinctive voice in the international art world.

An author, curator, and writer, his practice explores identity, migration, memory, and how culture moves across borders.

His latest curatorial project, Fellow Travellers, at @tabari_artspace in Dubai’s DIFC, brings together artists whose work examines movement, belonging and shared histories. By pairing poetry with visual art, the exhibition explores how personal experiences and cultural connections shape the stories we tell.

Through his writing and curatorial projects, Kholeif continues to create space for conversations about contemporary art and the diverse voices shaping its future.

#Villa88Man #OmarKholeif #ContemporaryArt #ArabArt #DubaiArt

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#whathappenedwas exhibitions, encounters and places seen through summer 2026

“Here, I present you with a fragment of what I call “dreamwork”—a form of social imagination arched around safeguarding aesthetic culture from the margins of history. Here, the diasporic imagination is reclaimed, illuminating the possibilities of shared movement—literal and metaphorical, exploring how it affects artistic method. Fellow Travellers is a parcel, a constitutive act of worlding, of dreaming.”

Fellow Travellers curated by Dr. Omar Kholeif at Tabari Artspace @tabari_artspace @dromarkholeif @malihatabari

Sonia Balassanian (b. 1942, Armenian-Iranian-American); Jai Chuhan (b. 1955, Punjab, India); Luísa Correia Pereira (1945–2009, Portuguese); Lalitha Lajmi (1932–2023, Indian); Irene Scheinmann (1933–2023, Iraqi-British) and Omar Kholeif (b. Cairo, Egypt)

#fellowtravellers #dreamwork #forwardthroughtherearview

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Every masterpiece deserves exceptional framing—crafted with precision, presented with elegance, and installed to perfection❤️✌️#friezeabudhabi #friezeabudhbai2026 #friezeabudhbai

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For art lovers, Dubai is full of galleries and exhibitions that are free to visit. Here’s where to find them, from contemporary spaces to creative corners of the city.

#MADAMEArabia
#ArtExhibitions
#Dubai

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Five women artists, decades of work rediscovered by @dromarkholeif.

Fellow Travellers at @tabari_artspace is an exceptionally rich exhibition, bringing together an impressive body of work by five remarkable women artists born between 1932 and 1955.

Behind the exhibition is internationally acclaimed curator Omar Kholeif, who notably co-curated the 2019 Sharjah Biennial. Drawing on nearly two decades of research, Kholeif brings together works spanning several decades, including rare and previously unseen pieces, offering a fresh perspective on these artists’ contributions to art history.

Alongside the five artists, Kholeif also joins the exhibition as an artist, presenting paintings under their own name for the first time.

An exhibition absolutely worth visiting!

📍 Tabari Artspace, DIFC, Dubai 📅 Until 10 January

Save the exhibition on the EMIRARTS app.

Irene Scheinmann (1933–2023)

Born in Baghdad and later based in Britain, Irene Scheinmann developed a distinctive practice spanning painting and printmaking.

Her mysterious, almost abstract landscapes explore displacement, exile and belonging.

Fellow Travellers marks an important rediscovery of her work in the region where she was born.

Luísa Correia Pereira (1945–2009)

The Portuguese artist developed a vibrant universe where nature, human figures and celestial forms merge.

A major discovery at Tabari: large-scale works created in Paris during the 1970s, exhibited publicly for the very first time. Omar Kholeif has spent five years researching her work.

Sonia Balassanian (b. 1942)

Born in Iran to an Armenian family, Sonia Balassanian became a prominent figure in New York’s abstract art scene in the 1970s.

Her large-scale, textured paintings evoke an invented calligraphy, reflecting questions of language, memory and displacement.

Her work has been exhibited at MoMA and the Venice Biennale.

Lalitha Lajmi (1932–2023)

Born in Kolkata, Lalitha Lajmi was an Indian painter and printmaker from a celebrated filmmaking family.

Known for her dreamlike watercolours, she created theatrical scenes filled with female figures, personal memories and subconscious imagery, often drawing on her own life an

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