MAYS IBRAHIM (ABU DHABI)
Experience Emirati literature like never before — not by seeing and reading, but through touch and sensation. “Off Script,” a series of artworks, translates poetry into geometry, mythology into digital sculpture, and memory into textile pattern.
Drawing from poems, Bedouin folklore and historical texts, Emirati artists have reshaped familiar symbols — like the palm tree and the desert — into contemporary artistic forms that speak to today’s cultural and emotional landscape.
Held under the patronage of Sheikh Nahayan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence, the exhibition runs until December 5, from 4pm to 8pm, at Al Multaqa Literary Salon.
The artwork Sada (resonance in Arabic) by Dubai-based multidisciplinary artist Latifa Saeed, is inspired by a line from The Collected Poems of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum: “I hear the echo of your voice amidst the noise of people.”
Saeed transforms sound into a visual composition of geometry, colour and texture.
At the centre, circles and lines create a pattern she calls the “geometry of echo,” made with layers of acrylic, pastel and pencil.
She also mixes in sand collected from two locations in Dubai: the conservation region of Al Marmoom and another undisclosed site, giving the canvas a tangible connection to the desert.
A blue ring gives structure to the sound, while deep red hues radiate around it like waves in motion. Saeed explained that this juxtaposition produces an optical effect called chromostereopsis, creating the illusion that the painting itself is vibrating and alive.
“The result is an overlap of image and sound, encouraging the viewer to experience a form of synesthesia where one sense translates into another”, the artist told Aletihad.
Several of the exhibition’s other artists draw inspiration from one of the UAE’s most enduring symbols: the palm tree.
For millennia, the palm has been woven into the region’s social, economic and spiritual fabric — a provider of shelter, food, craft materials, shade and metaphor.
Farha Seddiq Al Mutawa, an Emirati designer and entrepreneur from Abu Dhabi, explores its symbolism in “The Shining Palm,” a garment crafted from soft French fabric and hand-embroidered with a metallic thread known as Nagda.
The Emirati artist reimagines the palm not merely as a plant but as a monument of resilience, representing a life that withstands sun, scarcity and time.
For Al Mutawa, its symbolism extends naturally to Emirati womanhood — resilient, life-giving, dignified and foundational.
“Women are the foundation of society; without them, there would be no generation,” she told Aletihad.
The palm, she believes, reflects the same enduring generosity: its fronds provide shelter, its shade offers protection, and even in decline it continues to give.
The palm also emerges as an artistic mother figure in the reflections of Dr Mohammed Yousif, artist and Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Sharjah.
Drawing on decades of memory, he describes the tree’s role in desert and coastal life as shelter, gathering place, architectural material, and witness to human rituals.
It is, as the late writer Abdul Ghaffar Hussein once called it, “our aunt,” though for Yousif, it has always been something more personal: a teacher.
Through the palm, the artist said, he learned patience, deliberation, rhythm and observation.
From rope fibres to fronds and fruit, the tree appears in his materials both symbolically and structurally, grounding modern artistic exploration in the natural forms familiar to generations of Emiratis.
Sculpture and mythology meet in the work of Dr Karima Al Shomely, artist, educator and specialist in Islamic geometry and the visual heritage of Emirati women.
Her piece draws from the novel “The Statue of Dalma”, in which a young sculptor, Nurta, carves the deity Sirara from a rare black stone sourced from Dalma Island.
In the novel, the statue’s realism is such that viewers feel as though its eyes speak directly to them. Al Shomely reimagines this figure using 3D printing and lightweight industrial materials, opting for modern fabrication over traditional weight and solidity.
“I made the eyes the focus of the work, as they create interaction between the statue and the viewer, opening a space for silent dialogue between them,” she explained.
“These eyes are not just details, they are the connecting link that gives the statue a living energy that changes with the viewer, making each viewing experience unique and different.”
Not all inspiration in “Off Script” is ancient. For Shama Al Hamed, a visual artist born in Abu Dhabi in 1999, the emotional landscape of childhood emerges from urban architecture — the electrical substations, vents and service buildings that blended into the background of daily life.
“What urban planning designed as pure function becomes ornament, turning Abu Dhabi’s hidden infrastructure into a silent witness of childhood and place,” Al Hamed said in a statement to Aletihad.
Her textile-based work transforms these functional, often unnoticed facades into patterns, grids, and sculptural forms.