There is a plant in the Arabian Peninsula’s vast, windy deserts that has given up its roots. It tumbles across the sand, not knowing where it will end up, because the wind is constantly changing its mind. As it moves, it leaves behind temporary, spiraling patterns on the ground. It’s a restless, circular dance that has no purpose, goes on forever, and is exhausting. “Restless Circle,” the first institutional solo show by Emirati artist Afra Al Dhaheri, presents a strong image of cyclical exhaustion. The Sharjah Art Foundation is hosting the exhibition, which is a deep and very timely look at how tension, repetition, and time affect structures. It gives a strong diagnosis of what the artist calls “collective burnout.” Al Dhaheri’s work creates a space for radical stillness in a world where everything is always speeding up and there is always a demand to create or perform. It asks a crucial question: what happens when we stop to face the quiet, the unseen, and the unresolved?
It is a big deal that the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) is putting on the show. For more than ten years, SAF has been known as the best place in the area for critical and experimental contemporary art. It is a cultural powerhouse that has always supported difficult artistic practices and conversations. This show is a big deal for Afra Al Dhaheri, a key artistic voice of her generation in the United Arab Emirates. It is a big deal for her because it is a big deal for her because it is a big deal for her. However, the context is more complex, creating a significant institutional paradox. The fact that SAF exists at all is a result of the same rapid growth and “hyper-capitalism” that Al Dhaheri’s work so intelligently looks at. The Foundation’s goal of being an “advocate, catalyst, and producer of contemporary art” and moving forward with an “experimental and wide-ranging programmatic model” is closely tied to the cultural project of a nation built on speed and change. The Sharjah Art Foundation does a brave thing by commissioning and putting on an exhibition that deals with the “mental exhaustion” and “fatigue” that this very environment causes. It indicates that the regional art scene has grown up enough to look inward and encourage people to think critically about the social conditions that have made it possible for it to exist.
So, “Restless Circle” is more than just a look at one type of art; it’s a cultural barometer. Afra Al Dhaheri uses a carefully chosen vocabulary of simple but powerful materials like cotton rope, fabric, cement, and hair, along with a strong commitment to slow, repetitive, and often unseen work, to show how heavy modern life can be on the mind. Her practice is a way of resisting time, a way of slowing down in a culture that values speed. This show says that we can find a way to discuss the tiredness that builds up over time, almost without us noticing, in the never-ending cycle of doing and undoing, the tightness of the knot, and the quiet relief of letting it go. It is a dance of tiredness in which the artist expertly turns the weight of a moment into something that needs to be thought about deeply.
The Formative Vision of Afra Al Dhaheri
Afra Al Dhaheri’s artistic language was shaped by one of the fastest and most radical changes in cities in the late 20th century. She was born in Abu Dhabi in 1988, and her early years were spent in a time of rapid growth in the UAE, which she describes as being surrounded by “ceaseless construction and hyper-capitalism.” She had to move homes and schools a lot because the landscape was constantly changing. These experiences made her very concerned about time, change, memory, and loss. “I came to realize that my love of construction and architecture came from growing up around it,” she said, naming the “dusty construction environment” as the main color scheme of her home country. This physical space turned into a mental space, giving artists the raw materials they needed to explore how people and societies confront constant, often traumatic, change.
The dynamic interplay between inherited tradition and formal education forms the foundation of her artistic sensibility. Her work heavily relies on the materials and techniques of vernacular crafts inherited from her family. She says that her grandmothers, who were skilled at weaving palm leaves and knitting, and her creative mother taught her to love making things with her hands and the invisible work that women do around the house. This family history shapes her careful, step-by-step method, which she calls an “immersive production process” that is similar to a meditative practice. On the other hand, her formal arts education—a BA in Graphic Design from Zayed University in Abu Dhabi followed by an MFA in Painting from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2017—gave her the tools she needed to turn these personal stories into a strict, modern artistic language. Studying in the United States was especially important for her because it gave her the space to “step back and look at my city, my culture, my society… from a distance.” This transatlantic viewpoint enabled her to perceive the distinct temporalities of her two realms—”Time slows down in the United States and fast-forwards in the UAE”—and to commence an analysis of the cultural and psychological ramifications of this expedited tempo.
Al Dhaheri’s method is based on the idea of “unlearning,” which she uses to explain the process of critical dissection. This is not just an artistic way of trying out new materials; it is also a subtle and deep act of decolonization. She stresses that unlearning “how materials should be used” is the same as unlearning “certain ideologies that don’t make sense to me.” The most direct example she provides is the social pressure to straighten curly hair, which she sees as a possible “western kind of inherited colonialist ideology.” Her artistic actions—untwisting rope to show its wavy memory, letting hair stay in its natural state, and putting industrial and organic materials next to each other—become physical symbols of this ideological breakdown. Her practice goes beyond formalism by connecting the way she uses her chosen media to the way she questions inherited cultural norms and colonial beauty standards. It becomes a strong method for reclaiming culture and oneself, a way to return things to their original state to find a more real way of being and making. This changing practice has been getting more and more attention through important fellowships like the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship and international residencies at places like Porthmeor Studios in the UK and The Watermill Center in New York. Previous solo exhibitions, such as
The artist’s work has clearly progressed from Inevitable Ephemera (2016) in Boston to Split Ends (2021) at Green Art Gallery in Dubai, where critics praised it. Along with her studio work, her job as an assistant professor in visual arts at Zayed University shows how committed she is to helping the next generation and shaping the UAE’s growing arts scene. The end of this journey in “Restless Circle” is not only a personal achievement but also proof of a practice that has grown up with the culture it questions so eloquently.
Afra Al Dhaheri’s Material Lexicon
Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is built around a carefully made lexicon of materials, where everyday things have deep metaphorical meaning. The media she chooses are not just passive supports for ideas; they are also active agents in making meaning, each with its own history, memory, and physical properties. Hair and rope, which is used in industry, are two of the most important words in this vocabulary. For Al Dhaheri, hair is a main medium, a real part of the body that holds “time and memory.” It is a very personal material, but it also has a lot of social and cultural meaning, especially in the Gulf, where she says it is often thought of as a “private body part that we cover.” Using hair or things that look like hair becomes a way to question these limits of privacy and show the “invisible labor” that goes into keeping it hidden and maintaining it.
Al Dhaheri uses thick, industrial cotton rope to express these ideas on a large scale. This material is a strong, larger version of hair that makes its physical and symbolic properties even stronger. The rope has a lot of physical weight, which makes the metaphorical weight of cultural conditioning clear. One of her most important tasks is to untwist these ropes by hand, which can take weeks. The result is a cascade of wavy fibers that, as she says, “remembers that it was twisted,” just like hair holds the wave from a braid. This act of unmaking is a big part of what she does. In works such as
In her works Detangle (2020) and Conditioning the Knot (2022), she asserts that “to undo something may be a form of making in itself.” Dismantling is not destruction; it is a form of reverse creation that creates new knowledge by showing the material’s history and tension.
Cement, cinderblocks, and steel are durable industrial materials that are different from the organic, fibrous qualities of hair and rope. These are direct quotes from the landscape of her youth, which is what made the UAE’s rapid modernization possible. Al Dhaheri is interested in how these materials seem to be very strong, but her work tries to show how weak they really are. By putting heavy concrete next to thin strands of hair or flowing ropes, she creates a dynamic tension that shows the relationship between the fragile human body and the strong built environment, as well as between fleeting memory and the city’s seemingly permanent structures.
This material language is activated by a process methodology that serves as a conscious act of defiance. In a culture that values speed, Afra Al Dhaheri supports the slow, the repetitive, and the hard work. She says, “The speed of change in the UAE is beyond comprehension.” “So, in my art practice, I’m determined to slow down my work because moving quickly makes memories shorter.” The press release for “Restless Circle” says that fatigue is a key theme. Such tiredness is not an unfortunate side effect of her method; it is a central, performative part of the work’s meaning. The physical tiredness that comes from making the work—spending weeks untangling rope and repeatedly doing the same action—gets transferred to the object, which then gives off a feeling of all the hard work put into it. Examining the trajectory of her work reveals a significant shift in her ideas, transitioning from the personal to the collective. Her previous investigations commenced with “embodied recollections,” utilizing her hair as a medium to examine personal identity and memory. But her more recent projects have expanded to diagnose a common societal condition. This is clear from the titles of works like
Collective Exhaustion (2024) and the clear framing of the Restless Circle (2025) installation as a symbol of “collective burnout.” The change from small, personal hair strands to big, impersonal industrial ropes is a good example of this change. Her work has taken the personal experience of dealing with the trauma of sudden change and turned it into a broader criticism of a common problem. The personal “I” of her early work has turned into the powerful “we” of her current institutional moment.
A Tour of Afra Al Dhaheri’s “Restless Circle”: Choreographing Exhaustion
May Alqaydi, the Assistant Curator at the Sharjah Art Foundation, put together “Restless Circle.” It’s not just a collection of things; it’s a carefully planned experience that makes a case about time, work, and tiredness. The show features important works from the last ten years along with two new major commissions. This retrospective shows how Afra Al Dhaheri’s work has changed in terms of theme and material. As you walk through Gallery 6 in Al Mureijah Square, you are led through a series of gestures—casting, erasing, sewing, drawing, coiling, stretching, and undoing—that together make up a complicated dance of making and being in the modern world.
The exhibition begins with an archaeology of memory. In Absence We Forgot (2015) and To Revisit (2016) are early works that use casting, layering, and erasure to look at what is left when material forms start to fade. They are forensic in nature, examining the remnants of the past to comprehend the mechanisms of forgetting and remembering in a city that frequently appears to have obliterated its own recent history. This investigation into the past subsequently extends to include the contemporary social and architectural framework. The series
“Hide and Sew” (2020) explores how life at home in the Gulf shapes themes of privacy and protection. It uses textiles to look at the hidden stories and gendered work that happens in these spaces. In
Al Dhaheri’s Spiral Staircase (2020) is a triptych consisting of acrylic and graphite drawings that depict an architectural feature once commonly found on the exteriors of buildings in Abu Dhabi. The piece serves as a poignant tribute to a defunct building type. It illustrates the rapid physical transformation of the city, highlighting the role these buildings played in facilitating people’s daily lives and blurring the boundaries between public and private spaces. This marks a pivotal moment for the artist, as their focus shifts from the body to the entire city.
Then the show shifts to a more intense focus on the physical and mental aspects of work. The titles of the most recent works act like performance scores, giving direct instructions. In Round and Round We Go (2023), cotton rope is obsessively wrapped around five wooden rings, and countless bobby pins are clipped into the structure in a gesture of constant, almost frantic, repetition. People use the tiny bobby pins to tame and control their hair so often that it becomes an overwhelming task. In the same way,
Pull, Tie, Release (2024) has ropes that are tied together and stretched tight across a wooden frame. The title is a dance that shows the steps that went into making it: the strain of the pull, the tension of the hold, and the finality of letting go. In these works, the labor is not only talked about; it is also shown in a physical and visual way that lets the viewer feel the tension in their body.
This carefully built-up tension culminates in the two new commissions created for the exhibition. These pieces show both Al Dhaheri’s long-standing worries and a possible new path. The installation, Restless Circle (2025), serves as the exhibition’s thesis statement. The installation draws inspiration from desert plants that create spirals in the sand. It is a direct, physical metaphor for mental exhaustion and the feeling of being “endlessly pushed to produce or perform” without a clear goal. It personifies purposeless movement as a fundamental aspect of existence. In what might be seen as a response to this situation, the second commission,
I wanted a garden, and it awaited me in the folds (2025). It suggests a “slower, more intuitive mode of making.” The building of a mobile structure that can be used in many different places suggests a shift away from the strict, demanding structures of production toward something more natural, flexible, and maybe even healing. The exhibition’s main idea, evident in these two commissions, is a clear diagnosis of a group problem and a quiet, tentative search for a solution.
A Still Point in a World That Is Always Moving
“Restless Circle” makes Afra Al Dhaheri’s place as one of the most interesting and conceptually sound artists of her generation in the Gulf even stronger. The show is a powerful end to a ten-year study of the politics of work, the weight of memory, and the textures of time. Al Dhaheri’s work is similar to that of other contemporary artists from the area who look at how rapid urban development and negotiating heritage affect people, like Alia Saeed Al Shamsi’s documentation of overlooked architecture or Hamdan Buti Al Shamsi’s digital manipulations of ancestral landmarks. However, Al Dhaheri’s work is unique in that it focuses deeply on process and materiality as the main sources of meaning. Her work is less about showing what change does and more about being the work of processing that change. She doesn’t shape the new city; she shapes the mental energy needed to live there.
The curators of the show left us with one last, important question: “What happens when we spend time with what is quiet, invisible, and unresolved?” This is the main invitation of Al Dhaheri’s work. Her art makes a radical space for pause in a world culture that values speed, efficiency, and clear outcomes. It asks the viewer to stay with the feeling of tension, contemplate the remnants of a repetitive gesture, and recognize the quiet fatigue that is a part of so much of modern life. Her insistence on slowing down and the meditative and often difficult nature of her making process is not a way to get away from the world, but a way to get more involved with it. It is a way to make yourself more aware of how time passes and how experiences build up in a world where “fast movement creates a shorter span of memory.”
In the end, the exhibit comes back to its first, haunting image: the desert plant, caught in a never-ending dance driven by the wind. Afra Al Dhaheri doesn’t give you an easy way out of the busy circles of modern life. There is no simple solution to the collective burnout she so accurately describes. Instead, she gives something much deeper: recognition, through her careful, caring, and physically demanding work. She provides shape, weight, and texture to the anxiety that is everywhere in our time. She lets us see it, feel its tension, and follow its path over and over again. This pause may help us start the slow, necessary work of processing it. Her work creates a still point in a world that never stops moving. It’s not an escape but a clear, unflinching awareness.
Restless Circle
Sharjah Art Foundation
On view in Gallery 6,
Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah,
from 30 August to 14 December, 2025
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