Five Painters

There are conversations that quietly reorganise the way you see things. I remember sitting with Taymour in his gallery office, newly opened in Alserkal Avenue, at the early stages of this project, talking about art of the Arab world and our relationship to it. Not as a category to be managed or explained, but as something we both felt a need to nurture…In the past, access to our own history was found in institutions outside of the region, where now that has significantly changed. We now turn to the Gulf, where its artistic landscape in particular, in its very current moment has been brewing for a while. Through its many varied paths, its trajectory has culminated to a point of nuance, complexity and vibrance. This exhibition is part of that pathway. The five painters, Roudhah Al Mazrouei (b. 2003, Al Ain, UAE), Dalal Al-Obaidi (b. 1996, Kuwait), Hayfa Algwaiz (b. 1991, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Latifa Alajlan (b. 1992, Kuwait), and Hawazin Alotaibi (b. 1993, Wisconsin, US) showcased here did not arrive from nowhere. Neither did the impulse to gather them.

– Exhibition essay by Sara bin Safwan