Science of forgetting, art of remembering: Maraya Art Centre hosts Noor Al Suwaidi

Maraya Art Centre, the non-profit art space founded in 2010 by the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq), located at Al Qasba in Sharjah, is currently presenting The Sky Forgets, the Heart Remembers, a solo exhibition by Emirati artist, Noor Al Suwaidi. Closing July 30 (it opened on April 26), the show is curated by Cima Azzam. The exhibition was inaugurated in the presence of Sheikh Nahyan Bin Khalifa Bin Mohammed Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Al Thani, Zaki Nusseibeh, Shatha Al Mulla and Ahmed Obaid Al Qaseer, Chief Executive Officer of Shurooq.

Occupying the third floor of Maraya Art Centre, it brings together a new body of work that marks a significant moment in Al Suwaidi’s evolving practice. Across painting and sculpture, the works explore memory, abstraction and the emotional language of colour, as the artist continues her exploration of abstraction as a language through which memory, emotion, and lived experience, are expressed.

Rather than depicting recognisable subjects, her works invite viewers into shifting psychological landscapes where colour, gesture and form, move between presence and disappearance. The exhibition unfolds through three interconnected bodies of work. A series of abstract paintings are presented in which portraiture dissolves into landscape, allowing colour and gesture to evoke traces of memory, rather than being fixed representations.

World of flowers.

The Secret Life of Flowers revisits a recurring motif that has accompanied Al Suwaidi’s practice for more than a decade; here flowers are not approached as botanical studies, but as vessels of emotion, remembrance, and resilience.

Hala Khayat, Special Advisor, Art and Culture, Art Dubai, notes that “flowers recur throughout Noor’s work, not as decorative elements, but as emotional anchors. As she notes, “every artist has a moment with flowers”. In her case, they become an ode to beauty in the face of difficulty, a conscious turning toward light when confronted with darkness.” A bloom might appear suddenly, almost violently, before dispersing into lines and colour fields. The flowers do not remain stable; they melt, dissolve, and transform into rivers, into pathways, and gestures. The work operates in a space between realism and abstraction, where meaning is suggested, but never fixed.

Completing the exhibition, Like Coral, I Create Clouds marks the artist’s return to sculpture, translating the fluid language of her paintings into three-dimensional forms that explore weight, movement, and silence. Khayat says that “the sculptures themselves are deliberately distorted and stretched and upon closer examination, they reveal a sense of organic emergence, as if blossoming forms caught between states of becoming.” The exhibition creates a dialogue between colour and material, painting and sculpture, intimacy and atmosphere. Together, the works reflect Al Suwaidi’s continued interest in abstraction as an open and intuitive space, where meaning emerges through perception, rather than narrative.

Flight of colour.

Reflecting on her exhibition, she said that “Maraya has given me the opportunity to work on a scale I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to explore, allowing me to return to sculpture with the curator’s guidance and the institution’s support and financial backing.” The Sky Forgets, the Heart Remembers offers visitors an immersive encounter with an artistic practice that moves fluidly between painting and sculpture, bringing together works that consider memory not as a fixed record of the past, but as something continually shaped through colour, material, and feeling.

Khayat notes that at the heart of Noor’s practice lies a deep engagement with memory, not as a fixed archive, but as something fluid, fragmentary, and continuously reshaped. The title of the exhibition, The Sky Forgets, The Heart Remembers, encapsulates this tension between transience and permanence, between what passes and what endures. Conceived, titled, and developed prior to the tragic events that unfolded in the UAE on 28 February 2026 (when the country was targeted in a wave of Iranian missile and drone strikes), the exhibition carries an added weight of meaning in hindsight. In this context, says Khayat, Noor dedicates the exhibition to the “eagles of the sky”, the heroes of the Emirates, whose lives were given in service of the nation’s safety and security. The title, in its quiet duality, comes to mirror this gesture: the sky, vast and ever-changing, moves forward, while the heart holds, preserves, and remembers.

A view of the exhibition.

“Noor transcends her sorrow into accepting that change is the only constant, moving toward healing by letting her emotions fly to the skies; her feelings evaporate into beautiful, colourful clouds,” Khayat concludes.

There are days that pass quickly, like the clouds shifting above us. And yet, the feelings they carry remain, held within the body, and the heart. Conversely, there are moments where everything appears unchanged, where time seems suspended. The duality, between movement and stillness, forgetting and remembering, forms the emotional core of the exhibition.

Emirati artist Noor Al Suwaidi.

Maraya Art Centre provides a platform for contemporary visual arts from the UAE, the wider MENA region, and international contexts. It supports artistic practice through exhibitions, commissions, and publications and also houses a resource library offering access to books on art, design and culture, delivering a year-round programme of talks, workshops, and community-based activities.

The Centre also leads the Jedariya Street Art Initiative that enlivens Sharjah’s public spaces, while engaging youth in creative expression and community awareness. On Sharjah’s Flag Island, Maraya Art Centre’s sister institution, 1971 – Design Space, is committed to the field of contemporary design. Since its establishment in 2015, the venue has presented exhibitions that explore diverse and innovative approaches to contemporary design.