Mahmoud Moussa: Sculpture, Form & Memory

The UAE’s first solo exhibition dedicated to the Egyptian sculptor. Mahmoud Moussa (1913–2003) is described by Maha Al Mansoori Art Gallery – which is responsible for this short-run Frieze-adjacent show – as one of the most important figures in Arab modernism.

Curated by Al Mansoori, the exhibition is presented in collaboration with Motion Gallery in Cairo. It considers how material can hold memory, how reduction can intensify expression, and how subjects drawn from lived experience can achieve a presence that exceeds their immediate reference; as the gallery has it, “rather than imposing a single interpretation, it invites sustained attention to the relationship between each work’s physical construction and its emotional register … Moussa’s sculptures offer a compelling proposition: that the significance of sculpture need not depend on scale or spectacle. It may instead reside in the precision of a contour, the balance of a volume, or the quiet transformation of stone into a form that remains at once familiar and enigmatic”.

Maha Al Mansoori Art Gallery will move into a permanent space in the UAE capital early in 2027.

Image: Mahmoud Moussa, Untitled (1968)