Show White: Academy of Visual Arts, University of the Arts Sharjah exhibition
- Last updated: May 16, 2026 | 08:26
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
The annual faculty exhibition of the Academy of Visual Arts, University of the Arts Sharjah, hosted at Rawaq Gallery, Academy of Visual Arts, University of the Arts Sharjah (Apr. 8 – 23) and currently being hosted at XVA Gallery, Al Fahidi (Apr. 25 – May 21), is curated by Tor Seidel and assisted by Maryam AlQassimi. It explores the concept of ‘White’.
“White,” says Professor Nadia M. Alhasani, PhD and Director, Academy of Visual Arts, University of the Arts Sharjah “is a complex term with diverse definitions. It is representative of minimalism and modernity in art and design, purity and peace in culture and religion, emptiness and detachment in psychology and emotion, or a specific race under anthropology and sociology. This exhibition highlights faculty’s diverse fascination with and response to “white” through various mediums and techniques.”
“Sometime during the winter months of the 2000s,” recalls Tor Seidel, “I spent three months in north-east Siberia. I learned that the indigenous people – the Nenets – have dozens of words for snow, white, and frost. When I developed the theme of ‘White’ for the faculty exhibition, I reflected on the experience of light in Siberia and on how white light encompasses the entire colour spectrum. So, what are objects without light?
The artist must fathom the mystery of white.” Georgina Abood, who presents White Archive/Silent Narratives, is a Palestinian interior architect, designer, and researcher. The White Archive/Silent consists of wrapped photographs and handwritten documents from Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Nazareth, drawn from personal family archives and documentary work, with elderly Palestinians who speak about homes they were forced to leave.
Dr. Mohammed Yousif Alhammadi’s The Blank Slate revisits the simplicity of childhood where play, material and imagination, exist without separation. He is a pioneering Emirati sculptor, educator and cultural figure, widely recognised as one of the founders of the United Arab Emirates’ contemporary art movement. He is a co-founder of the Emirates Fine Arts Society (1979), where he served as president. Muatasim Alkubaisy is an Iraqi sculptor and teacher at the College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Sharjah.
His presentation, Trade of the Sacred, exposes the moment when the sacred shifts from a spiritual value into a commodity of power. Alina Erimia is a fashion designer and educator. Currently a lecturer at the College of Design, her practice draws on the engraving techniques of the fifteenth century, particularly those associated with the Northern Renaissance and the work of Albrecht Dürer. “My work Accumulated Silence & Fields of Attention resists the speed and immediacy of contemporary visual culture and proposes slowness, patience, and intimacy as critical gestures, allowing beauty to surface through precision, labour, and concentrated attention,” she says.
Muhammad Asad Iqbal is a seasoned multimedia designer. His Layers of Connection installation is a living metaphor for human connection. “Just as white light invisibly contains all colours, the surface we present to others contains hidden emotional complexity,” he says. Thaier Helal (b. 1967, Syria) is a contemporary painter. He has been based in the UAE since the 1990s. A senior tutor at the College of Fine Arts, in White Landmarks, the colour white functions as both presence and absence, evoking earth, stone, and water while suggesting silence and erasure.
Dr. Iman Ibrahim is an award-winning designer and associate professor at the College of Design. Her work bridges design, research, and innovation, with a focus on sustainable design. In Biogenesis, the White Cell Lamp conjures the structure of living cells. The pristine white is the end point of all colours. Andreea Lonhardt-Muresan is a textile artist, fashion designer, and lecturer based in Dubai, whose work investigates the relationship between fabric, space, and architecture through textile installations. A lecturer at the College of Design, her work White, Interrupted reflects on white as an accumulation of light and matter.
Tor Seidel is a German artist, curator and lecturer (M.A.Phil) with many years of experience in academia as well as in the gallery and exhibition sectors. He also works as a filmmaker and is the author of art books. In Dispersion, large-format photographs challenge the viewer to carefully decipher what is depicted. In Reconsidering a Photograph of the Exhibition (0,10), he utilises an iconic image from the last Suprematist exhibition, ‘0.10’, a groundbreaking event in 20th-century art history. Only five photographs from the exhibition exist.
“By recreating the image’s composition and content on the wall with white paper,” says Seidel, “I explore the extent to which viewing this photograph has become embedded in artistic and cultural memory.” Joshua Watts, is a faculty member at the Academy of Visual Arts in Sharjah.
In Lost in Plain Sight, he explores the many ways we perceive and interact with the people and environments around us.
Maryam AlQassimi (b. 1993, Sharjah) is an Emirati artist who explores the structures of the mind through painting and mixed media. She is the founder of Rekn Happenings, an interdisciplinary platform in Sharjah fostering immersive, cross-cultural artistic exchange. A studio officer at the Academy of Visual Arts, her work White Matter appears as an ongoing investigation into the depths and structures of the mind. “The colour white in the base is not an absence but an active, generative field,” she says. “The title refers to the white matter of the brain, its network of connective tissue responsible for communication. White is a place where data accumulates, dissolves, and reconfigures, thus enabling endless narratives.”