Emirati artist explores inherited grief, fragile memory and emotional landscapes through photography, sound, painting and material installations at Nad Al Sheba 1 Gallery.
Some exhibitions are built around objects.
Others are built around absence.
In her solo debut Unfolding, Emirati artist Moza Al Falasi turns inward to explore what remains when places, people and time itself begin to dissolve into memory. Presented by Tashkeel, the exhibition opens on 15 May 2026 at the Nad Al Sheba 1 Gallery in Dubai and runs until 26 June.
The show marks the culmination of Al Falasi’s participation in the Tashkeel Critical Practice Programme (CPP), a long-term initiative launched in 2014 that supports UAE-based artists through mentorship, funding, studio access and structured artistic development. Over twelve months, Al Falasi worked closely with mentors Luisa Menano and Hanaa Bou Hamdan, refining a practice rooted in emotional archaeology — the act of tracing what cannot be physically held.
At its core, Unfolding is not a reconstruction of a home, but an attempt to understand how a home continues to exist after it is gone.
A practice shaped by memory and loss
Working across photography, sound, painting, plaster and fabric, Al Falasi builds environments rather than images. Her practice does not aim to document reality in a literal sense, but to capture its emotional residue — the texture of memory, the echo of presence, the weight of absence.
Her work moves through themes of inherited grief, personal loss and the invisible threads that connect identity across generations. These ideas have become more pronounced following deeply personal bereavements, which she describes as reshaping her understanding of grief not as a single event, but as a layered inheritance.
“My work is deeply rooted in the complexities of inherited grief,” Al Falasi explains. “It is both personal and collective, visible and unseen. My art has become a way to navigate loss and life at the same time.”
Rather than offering closure, her practice sits within uncertainty — questioning whether art is a form of healing, documentation, or something in between.
Inside Unfolding: a house that no longer stands still
The exhibition begins with a simple premise: places do not end when we leave them.
In Unfolding, the house is not treated as architecture, but as an emotional field — unstable, fragmented, and continuously reshaped by memory. Walls become texture. Silence becomes material. Time loses its linearity.
Visitors move through a space where photography blends with sound, where painted surfaces meet softened materials, and where fragments of domestic life appear only to dissolve again. The work resists narrative certainty. Instead, it asks viewers to encounter rather than interpret.
What emerges is not a singular story, but overlapping layers of childhood, family memory, grief and recent loss — folding into one another without resolution.
Within this shifting landscape, recurring imagery of women beside olive trees introduces a quieter counterpoint. The olive tree, enduring and weathered, becomes a symbol of persistence — not triumph over loss, but survival within it.
An exhibition as an environment, not an object
Rather than presenting discrete works, Unfolding operates as an immersive environment. The viewer is not positioned outside the work, but within it — moving through fragments of perception where meaning forms slowly, and often incompletely.
It is an exhibition that refuses to resolve itself.
Instead, it holds space for what remains unresolved: memory that does not settle, grief that does not conclude, and homes that continue to exist in emotional form long after their physical disappearance.
Extending the experience beyond the gallery
Tashkeel has also extended Unfolding beyond the gallery space through a collaboration with Gerbou Restaurant, located adjacent to the exhibition venue. As part of an ongoing series, Gerbou’s chefs work with exhibiting artists to translate their themes into edible form.
For this exhibition, Al Falasi developed a conceptual direction that explores the tension between sweetness and salt — dualities that mirror emotional states within her work. Sweetness reflects intimacy, tenderness and memory, while salt carries the imprint of grief, tears and what remains after loss.
The resulting dessert becomes an extension of the exhibition’s language — layered, contrasting, and intentionally unresolved, echoing the emotional architecture of the show itself.
Unfolding runs at Tashkeel, Nad Al Sheba 1 Gallery, Dubai from 15 May to 26 June 2026.
