Ayyam Gallery Dubai, (11, Alserkal Avenue) is pleased to present Collapse, the solo exhibition of Sama Alshaibi. Featuring a diverse range of work spanning several years of her artistic career, the exhibition highlights Alshaibi’s conceptual approach to photography and the layered and collapsing signs that are integral to her distinctive aesthetic, particularly her use of the body as a metaphor for spatial and temporal transgressions. In addition to outlining Alshaibi’s intricate sense of formalism, the photographs, installations, and videos of Collapse indicate the underlying themes that have shaped an ongoing narrative in her work, as the artist traces the consequences of war, the psychic effects of forced migration, and the ecological crises that have resulted from such manmade disasters.
Several of Alshaibi’s photo-based projects are included in the exhibition, allowing the viewer to travel through a series of performances. By positioning her body, or that of another model, as an image that measures the psychological content of a scene, Alshaibi symbolically gestures to conditions that obstruct physical movement and suspend the imagination, forcing figures to navigate the unseen yet palpable obstacles of fraught spaces.
