Nja Mahdaoui show opens season at Bassam Freiha Art Foundation
- Last updated: October 12, 2025 | 11:04
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
The Bassam Freiha Art Foundation (BFAF), located in Cultural District, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, has opened the new season with a programme of exhibitions, including a Nja Mahdaoui retrospective. Founded by philanthropist and art collector Bassam Said Freiha and the first and only private art foundation on Saadiyat Island, BFAF’s new programming combines historic collections, contemporary voices and leading modern Arab artists. Providing a platform for local and international artists and designed to further BFAF’s ambition to grow and nurture the region’s art scene, each exhibition is accompanied by a programme of community events.
The landmark exhibition titled Nja Mahdaoui: The Choreographer of Letters (Oct. 24 – Jan. 25, 2026), explores the work of Tunisian multimedia artist Nja Mahdaoui (b. 1937, Tunisia), one of the most influential figures in Arab modern art. Co-curated by Dr. Michaela Watrelot, head curator and director of exhibitions at Bassam Freiha Art Foundation, and Nja Mahdaoui’s daughter, Molka Mahdaoui, the focused retrospective surveys over six decades of practice by the Tunisian master, who sublimates Arabic calligraphy into a visual and abstract contemporary art form.
On view are nearly 30 works from his early career through to recent years, including paintings on parchment, vellum paper, linen and metal, silkscreen prints and bronze sculpture. Highlights include an early painting from Mahdaoui’s Concretion series (1971), layering intense red, green and blue swirls of lacquered oil, with his signature abstracted calligraphy extending horizontally across the composition, in an interplay of form and gesture.
A large -scale and intricate masterpiece created in mixed media, Untitled 3, from the Azimuth series (2012), sees sweeping diagonals and concentric forms intersect with a central circular motif to orchestrate movement across the vellum surface. Graphemes on Arches 2 (2011) presents a masterfully complex and colourful circle tightly composed in ink; it is exemplary of the strong presence of balance and rhythm across Mahdaoui’s work. The exhibition bridges both tradition and modernity and explores how Mahdaoui’s calligraphic abstraction has shaped global perceptions of Arab art.
Bringing together concepts of identity and heritage, it celebrates his enduring legacy, while also reinforcing the Foundation’s role as a leading platform for Arab artistic excellence and cross-cultural dialogue. “Internationally renowned as a “choreographer of letters, Mahdaoui is widely recognised for his pioneering role in the development of calligraphic abstraction, freeing the letter from its linguistic constraints, to reveal its endless creative potential,” said Dr. Michaela Watrelot. “As one of the leading modern Arab artists, it is an honour to bring his retrospective to Saadiyat Island to celebrate his artistic legacy, and cement our commitment to giving local audiences access to private art collections, with this collection from the Nja Mahdaoui Foundation. This is an unmissable exhibition for anyone interested in the MENA region’s culture and heritage.”
Molka Mahdaoui said that “the Nja Mahdaoui Foundation is truly honoured to collaborate with the esteemed Bassam Freiha Art Foundation on an exhibition celebrating both Mahdaoui’s remarkable 60-year artistic journey and his long-standing connection with the UAE. Especially as the exhibition, presented in the heart of Abu Dhabi’s cultural district, is designed to coincide with the launch of the first ever catalogue raisonné project dedicated to a Tunisian artist, to be published by Rizzoli.”
Other highlights beginning in autumn at the Foundation include Constructing the Orient: Fragments of a Western Dream (Oct. 24 – May 31, 2026), drawn from the private collection of Bassam Said Freiha and key loans from the Ary Jan Gallery. The exhibition of Orientalist works includes outstanding paintings by Jean-Léon Gérôme, one of the most celebrated Orientalist artists of the 19th century.
The show unfolds across five thematic sections, each focusing on a central motif within Orientalist visual language and examining how artists shaped their subjects into recurring archetypes. From imagined interiors and bustling marketplaces to archetypes of men and women, the works on view invite audiences to reflect on how the “Orient” was constructed through Western eyes and how the images continue to shape perceptions even today.
Nat Bowen: Chromology (Oct. 7-26) is a contemplative exploration of colour’s psychological and emotional impact by British contemporary artist Nat Bowen. Known for her glossy, abstract resin works poured onto acrylic, the artist creates luminous, aqueous fields that transform colour into a language of emotion and presence. Informed by the study of colour psychology, her practice consists of an internationally recognised body of work that fuses material innovation with emotional depth. Through Chromology, viewers are invited into an intimate space of reflection, where colour is not simply observed, but experienced as a catalyst for calm and psychological resonance. The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of artist-led tours and workshops.
The Art Circle Award: Story of a Dot (Nov. 3-12) is being hosted in collaboration with The Art Circle, the fifth edition of the annual awards and takes inspiration from Bauhaus principles and Arab modernism, inviting artists to explore the transformative power of the dot.
The group exhibition showcases finalists alongside previous winners, underscoring the award’s important role in nurturing regional talent. Al Burda Exhibition — The Shape of Meaning (Nov. 18 – Jan. 25, 2026) is in response to Nja Mahdaoui’s retrospective. It presents loans from the Ministry of Culture UAE’s Al Burda exhibition from 2008 — 2023, an annual show where contemporary artists engage with the cultural and semantic power of the written word, while experimenting with form and medium. The exhibition stages a dialogue between calligraphy as abstract form and as linguistic tradition, showing how artists today both inherit and reinvent tradition.