Emirati artist Eman Al Hashemi opens her debut solo exhibition, "The Horizon We Inherit," at Iris Projects gallery in Abu Dhabi on September 26, with the show running through November 26.
Bringing together ceramics, printmaking and mixed media, the exhibition examines how the UAE's urban landscape shapes memory and the rhythms of daily life for its residents. Al Hashemi draws on familiar elements of the Emirati cityscape — sunlight, streetlights, building facades — reworking them into imagery she describes as both recognisable and strange, prompting viewers to look again at surroundings they normally pass without noticing. the exhibition's central question is what remains when a place is transformed by construction and redevelopment — a theme that resonates strongly in a country where skylines and neighbourhoods shift rapidly year to year. Trained in ceramics and printmaking, Al Hashemi builds a visual bridge between personal memory and the physical changes reshaping Emirati cities.
The show arrives as part of a broader wave of exhibitions opening across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah at the start of the new art season, spanning photography, painting, sculpture, textiles and moving image. Regional culture observers point to this season as evidence of a maturing contemporary art scene in the UAE, with growing institutional support for homegrown Emirati artists whose work speaks directly to the lived experience of a generation coming of age in the Gulf's fast-changing cities.
"The Horizon We Inherit" will be on view at Iris Projects in Abu Dhabi through the end of November.