SAF 2025

Displacement

Free
Photography
Exhibition

Curated by
Rahaab Allana

The Old PWD Complex

14th December - 21st December
11:00 AM - 07:00 PM

Supported By

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The exhibition is conceptualized around contemporary image-oriented debates in today's uncertain landscape, centering on the theme of ‘displacement’ as a critical experience. The participating artists from the gulf and beyond engage in self-reflective and aesthetic explorations of the internal and external shifts they encounter in their lives, work, and social commitments.

Emerging from colonial rule post-1950s, regions across the subcontinent, Middle East, and Africa adopted revisionist political and artistic strategies, merging street culture, journalism, and folk art. Practices like montage and subversive print histories fostered connections among activist and outsider imperatives, contributing to the de-colonial movement today.

This curatorial project seeks to rethink location as a stable variable and explore the intertwined networks of art between the South Asian and Arab worlds, rooted in overlapping histories and migrant artist narratives. It emphasizes the ‘popular’ as a prism to navigate satire, gender, and social critique while theorizing fluid identities and border concepts where ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’ are always churning - the lyrical flows into the evidentiary; dislocation marks embeddedness.

The show is supported by The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.

Artists: Ali Akardy, Nandan Ghiya, Shaima Saleh and more

Scenographer: Sukanya Bhaskar

Image Caption:

Ali Arkady, War of Mosul, Iraq, 2016

Monolithography Technique

From the exposition Between Two Memories, 2022

Courtesy the artist

Displacement

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