Image: Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai
Leila Heller Gallery opens a solo exhibition by the Emirati artist Karima Al Shomely at its Dubai space in Alserkal Avenue on 23 September 2026. ‘Between a Fold and a Memory’ occupies Gallery 3 and runs until 10 November, with an opening reception on 23 September from 6 to 9 p.m.
Al Shomely, born in 1965, works from the clothing, textiles and adornments of Emirati women. The burqa recurs throughout the show, treated less as a symbol than as an object with a history: how it was made, how it was worn, and how it passed from one generation to the next. In a work titled ‘Neel’ (Indigo), the dye that colours the garment is shown bleeding into water; in ‘Khait’ (Thread), the artist recalls the women who once sewed burqas at home to help support their families.
A second strand of the exhibition takes traditional Emirati fabrics known by names such as Bou Tira, Bu Glaym and Bu Teelah, enlarges their patterns and remakes them in metal. The works listed for the show reflect this pairing: a series of photographic prints, each 70 by 47 centimetres and titled after a fabric, and aluminium sculptures carrying the same names, the largest of them around 137 centimetres wide. Across photography, sculpture, textile and video, the gallery frames the project as a way of carrying these materials and the stories attached to them into the present.
Al Shomely holds a doctorate and describes herself as an artist, visual researcher and educator; her research concerns Islamic geometry and the heritage iconography of Emirati women. Recent exhibitions include ‘Buqshe’ at the University of Exeter in 2025, ‘Their Stories’ at ECC in Venice in 2024 and ‘Sahhara: Hidden Adornments’ at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah in 2022, and she has shown in venues including Expo 2020 Dubai, Paris, Berlin, London, New York, Seoul and Bonn. Her awards include first place in the Sultan Al-Owais Award in 2002, 2005 and 2018, a prize at the 5th Egyptian International Print Triennial in Cairo in 2006 and second prize in the installation category of the Sharjah International Art Biennial in 2001.
The exhibition opens on the same evening as two other shows at the gallery, Azza Al Qubaisi’s ‘Between Land and Sea’ in Gallery 1 and Manish Nai’s ‘In Search of Material Within Material’ in Gallery 2, both also closing on 10 November. Al Shomely’s work will additionally be included in the gallery’s presentation at Contemporary Istanbul, Booth B110, from 23 to 27 September.
