Sama Alshaibi: طرس (Tterss)

A solo exhibition of recent body work by one of the gallery’s stars. Alshaibi’s multimedia work explores spaces of conflict and the power struggles that reimagine Baghdad’s transformation – its peaks, declines, and latent possibilities. Baghdad becomes a site of physical presence and alternative visions – one that is “always mediated, annotated, and glimpsed through shifting thresholds” as Alshaibi puts it.

After 40 years, Alshaibi returned to her homeland several times between 2021 and 2023. To reorient herself with a city she had once known more through imagination than lived experience, she constructs an abstracted and interrupted history and reality; the Arabic title evokes the idea of a palimpsest, a concept Alshaibi explores through the superimposed strata of imagery within her collages that immerse the city’s ruins and infrastructures into a deeper narrative of alienation. LiDAR data mapping is interwoven with photographs and archival materials to create a speculative space for understanding historical Arab cities as microcosms of broader global crises, where past and present collide

To 30 May.

Above: Sama Alshaibi, Duplicates (2024)