Art of summer: Artbooth Gallery show captures spirit of season
- Last updated: August 6, 2025 | 09:37
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Artbooth Gallery, a leading art space in the national capital, is hosting Summered, a group exhibition that brings together a constellation of artists whose expressive works span continents and sensibilities (July 21 – Sept. 7). The public can immerse themselves in a universe where summer turns into an inner season, a state of mind or a breath of inspiration that ties together nature, memory, and imagination.
Soraya Abu Naba’a, Gilbert Halaby, Asaad Arabi, James Matthews, Habuba Farah, Noor Bahjat, Bruno Sfeir, Oussama Diab, Layal Khawly and Elias Naman, are the artists who create a dialogue through works that blend contrast, symbolism, vibrant forms, and sculpted silences.
From the dreamlike and meticulous florals of Soraya Abu Naba’a to the introspective paintings of Gilbert Halaby, Summered reveals, through each work, a fragment of a personal world that opens itself to collective reflection.
James Matthews, a visual artist and educator based in Abu Dhabi since 2007, brings to the exhibition a visual language shaped by international experience. Asaad Arabi offers lyrical cityscapes where colours dance like suspended musical notes, while Habuba Farah weaves geometric abstraction into a poetic modernity, rooted in sound and rhythm.
Noor Bahjat presents surreal and densely narrative self-portraits, while Bruno Sfeir explores interior worlds with symbolic depth. Oussama Diab expresses displacement and memory with gentle irony and sharp cultural references. Layal Khawly, penultimately through architectural compositions, seeks unity between art and social engagement. Finally Elias Naman, a sculptor of silence, reveals raw, pure, and timeless emotion through hand-carved stone.
Soraya was born to a Palestinian father and a mother of Lebanese descent. She spent her childhood life in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Travelling has had a huge impact on her visual language and meeting people from different countries, ignited an interest in their life stories. Gilbert Halaby (b. 1979) is a self-taught, multi-disciplinary artist and renowned designer who was born in a village in Mount Lebanon. He is known for producing a wide variety of art and written work that spans paintings, sculptures, poems and letters.
Born in Damascus (1941), Asaad Arabi, in different series throughout his lengthy career, has skilfully used composition and colour in harmony, creating unity between the different aspects of his work. In the defined colour blocks of his abstract works, viewers gradually discern figures, architectural forms and patterns, while in his figurative works, bodies are painted in hues that merge with their environments. James Matthews is a British artist known for various styles, including Impressionist and Modern landscapes and portrait sculpture. He also works with woodblock and mixed media prints, often incorporating themes of culture, environment and sustainability related to the UAE, particularly using date palm tree paper.
Over the course of a lifelong creative journey, Habuba Farah (b. 1931) has established a distinctive artistic identity through dynamic abstract compositions that explore colour, geometry, and movement. Her style, is often described as ‘Lyrical Geometric Abstraction’. “I identify as a woman and artist of Arab descent,” she once said, reflecting on how her artistic practice embodies both her Brazilian upbringing and Arab heritage. She was born into a family of Lebanese immigrants who settled in Brazil in the early 20th century.
Noor Bahjat is a surrealist self-portrait artist working in an expressionistic style with a primarily figurative subject matter. After a visit to the Philippines, her palette and visual narrative drastically changed, moving away from dark and static compositions towards illuminated backgrounds, incorporating elements of nature and water in her portraits. Bruno Sfeir is an Uruguayan-Lebanese painter, who, in his extensive career, has created works across various mediums, exploring a wide range of themes. His art has travelled around the globe; each piece reflects a deep internal process, rooted in meditation.
Due to his background as a stateless Palestinian, Oussama Diab has always been a refugee, including in his native country, Syria. His work reflects the questions relating to humanity and freedom, justice and injustice, violence and struggle, human suffering and loss. But despite having experienced war and loss first-hand, he has always been moved by compassion and by hope too – another feature he wants to express in his work. He is not primarily concerned with political issues, but with the principles of humanity.
Layal Khawly is a Lebanese visual artist and painter. Khawly decided to use her art for the common good, allowing those who cannot express themselves to be represented through her, thus allowing nobody to truly ever feel alone. Without preparatory sketches or machinery, Elias Naman sculpts by hand, forging an unfiltered dialogue between artist and stone. His work explores themes of identity, spirituality and the human condition, working to capture fleeting emotions in enduring materials.
Summered is more than an ode to the blazing light of the season. It is a journey through the inner landscapes of being, an invitation to contemplate the world differently, in a time suspended between warmth, reflection, and creation. Together, the artists form an orchestra, each voice distinct, harmonised in shared pursuit: to render visible the unseen layers of the self, of memory, and of belonging. The works transcend aesthetics: they are testaments, heirlooms, and quiet revolutions, each piece a vessel of history, transformation, and vision. Summered is a moment of pause within movement, a season captured not in Fahrenheit, but in feeling. The works are the echoes of a summer lived in full colour, depth, and purpose.