Today's Edition
Mays Ibrahim (ABU DHABI)
For years, Afra Al Dhaheri found herself pre-occupied with a question: how do people experience art in an increasingly fast-paced world?
The Abu Dhabi-based Emirati artist, whose practice began in painting and sculpture, had become increasingly interested in time, memory and attention – and whether audiences were truly lingering with artworks long enough to absorb them.
“People tend to just take pictures and leave and spend minimal time with the artwork,” Al Dhaheri told Aletihad in a recent interview. “I was constantly questioning how can we slow down time.”
Those questions gradually pushed her practice beyond traditional visual art forms and into immersive, sensory and performative work.
Al Dhaheri holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and teaches sculpture, ceramics and painting at Zayed University.
She said the shift happened organically as she began experimenting with sound, light and audience interaction.
“I was curious what would happen if I introduced sound to my work, or light to my work,” the artist said. “How could that evolve?”
Her growing interest in performance coincided with wider reflections on pace and over-stimulation in contemporary life.
“We’re working at a pace that does not allow us to sit down and contemplate,” she said. “I also think as a result of living a fast-paced life, our span of memory has become shorter.”
One of the most distinctive elements of her studio practice involves the repetitive manual process of untwisting thick cotton ropes strand by strand before incorporating them into installations.
The process can take weeks and often becomes a collective activity involving assistants, interns and visiting artists.
“We literally sit there and untwist for hours collectively,” she said. “It becomes this meaningful shared experience.”
For Al Dhaheri, the act itself is central to the work rather than simply preparation for it.
“It allows us to kind of be in a moment of just doing and not thinking,” she said.
Her transition into performance accelerated after visits to performance festivals in Brussels and Vienna in 2023, followed by participation in the summer programme at Watermill Center, founded by theatre director Robert Wilson.
There, she worked collaboratively with performers, lighting designers and technicians while helping reproduce one of Wilson’s theatre productions.
“That programme allowed me to understand what it takes to produce such works, and how the collective becomes almost inevitable,” she said.
Al Dhaheri later joined Numoo, the professional development accelerator run by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, which she said helped her understand the practical frameworks behind performance-making.
The programme introduced her to concepts such as technical riders, hospitality riders, contracts and collaborative production structures; areas she had not previously encountered while working primarily within gallery systems.
“With Numoo, a lot of the questions that I was not sure how to manage were answered,” she said.
Al Dhaheri has since worked with lighting designers, sound artists and engineers on immersive performance-based works, including her Collective Exhaustion series, which invites audiences into contemplative sensory environments.
“I create pieces that engage people on different levels and not just through their eyes,” she said.
For Al Dhaheri, collaboration itself has become an essential artistic principle.
“I think having more people in the studio develops an energy that eventually is absorbed by the work,” she explained. “And I think better when I have people around me.”
That interdisciplinary approach echoes the philosophy she encountered while working with Wilson.
“Only when people interact from different disciplines is when interesting things happen,” she recalled him saying.
