Art Africa Magazine

Working with materials such as cotton rope, fabric, cement, and hair, Al Dhaheri highlights slow gestures, deliberate movements, and the fatigue that emerges from ongoing, repetitive, and often invisible labour. Time is not a backdrop but an active force in her work. It bends, drifts, loops and circles back, creating a fragile balance between continuity and rupture.

In early works, such as In absence we forgot (2015) and To Revisit (2016), the artist experiments with casting, layering, and erasure to consider what remains when material forms begin to fade. Later works, such as Conditioning the Knot (2022) and To Detangle (2020), draw attention to the act of undoing, suggesting that dismantling can be a form of making in its own right.

Place also shapes the artist’s practice. The series Hide and Sew (2020) reflects on domestic life in the Gulf, focusing on themes of privacy and protection. In Spiral Staircase (2020), a triptych of acrylic and graphite drawings, Al Dhaheri turns to an architectural feature once common in Abu Dhabi: spiral staircases attached to the exterior of buildings. The work maps not only architectural change but also the lived routines formed around such structures.

Her most recent works deepen her investigation into time, repetition and gesture. Round and Round We Go (2023) features cotton rope coiled around five wooden rings, studded almost relentlessly with bobby pins. Pull, Tie, Release (2024) features knotted ropes stretched across a wooden frame, its title echoing the choreography of its creation: the strain, the hold, and the letting go.