Afra Al Dhaheri’s work is rooted in her experiences growing up in Abu Dhabi and the widerUAE – a place of recent and rapid change. Working across various mediums including mixedmedia, sculpture, drawing,

painting, installation, photography, and printmaking, she draws out notions of time andadaptation, rigor and fragility.

 

With each experiment, there is a new phase, each new phenomenon or actualization pluckedfrom her unique vocabulary of references –

repetition acts as a method for prolonging time as much as a tool through which to trulyexperience or realize each stage of a work.

 

Born in 1988 in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Al Dhaheri obtained her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, USA in 2017 and had her residencies from The Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design in 2014 and Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019).

 

Solo exhibitions include Split Ends, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2021) and Inevitable Ephemera, T + H Gallery, Boston, USA (2016). Selected group exhibitions include Beyond: Emerging Artists, Cromwell Place, London, UK (2021); Conscious Becoming, Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium (2021);Beyond: Emerging Artist, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2020); From Within, Riyadh, KSA(2019); Avoid Bad Dreams, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2019); Barcelona to Abu Dhabi, Manarat AlSaadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2018); Emirati Expressions, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2011 and2015).

 

She works as an Assistant Professor in Visual Arts at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.