In conversation with Suzette Bell-Roberts, Emirati artist Afra Al Dhaheri reflects on ‘Restless Circle’ — her first institutional exhibition in the UAE at the Sharjah Art Foundation — where repetition, materiality, and time converge in a quiet meditation on labour, endurance, and renewal.
Afra Al Dhaheri, Restless Circle Exhibition view, 2025. Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin
In ‘Restless Circle’, Emirati artist Afra Al Dhaheri transforms the act of repetition into a language of reflection. Now on view at the Sharjah Art Foundation, her first institutional exhibition in the UAE brings together over a decade of work that meditates on endurance, care, and the unseen labour embedded in everyday gestures. Working with materials such as rope, cement, fabric, and hair, Al Dhaheri draws from the sensory textures of her environment — the architecture, rhythms, and residue of a rapidly changing Gulf landscape. The exhibition is anchored by two new commissions that explore the tension between movement and stillness, inviting viewers into a space where time loops, bends, and unfolds at a slower pace. Through her material and conceptual rigour, Al Dhaheri reveals the quiet poetics of persistence and the beauty of what remains unfinished.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: ‘Restless Circle’ marks your first institutional exhibition in the UAE. How did it feel to see your practice gathered and contextualised in this way?
Afra Al Dhaheri: I feel fortunate — this is my first institutional show here, and it’s been an incredible experience. Working with the curator to bring together so many of my works, some of which I hadn’t seen in years, felt almost like revisiting old conversations with myself. Over the years, people have gravitated towards my larger installations — the fibre and textile works — so the exhibition focuses on my material explorations. This language has evolved through repetition and tension.
Seeing those pieces together for the first time was emotional. Many had long been in collections, so assembling them was like re-encountering fragments of myself. The process revealed vulnerabilities — the moments of doubt and questioning that are part of my making — but also a continuity I hadn’t recognised before.
Afra Al Dhaheri, Timeframe, 2023 (right and left), Impossibly Frail, 2023 (centre). Installation view: Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin
The exhibition highlights this “material language” you’ve built — rope, cement, fabric, and other raw elements. How did this vocabulary evolve?
My background is in painting; I did my MFA in it, and I still paint occasionally. But over time, I became more interested in sculpture and installation — in materials I could find around me. I often shop in hardware stores in Abu Dhabi, and those materials have become part of my everyday vocabulary: cement, plaster, wood, rope, fabric, and ceramics.
Each carries its own history. Cotton rope, for example, came into my practice when I was searching for a substitute for hair. I had been using my own hair in small drawings — collected strands that I wove into intimate compositions. But I wanted to scale that up, to talk about labour and care on a more physical level. Rope allowed me to do that — to hold those same ideas but express them through endurance and gesture.
Afra Al Dhaheri, No.7, 2020. From‘To Detangle’, 2020. Installation view: ‘Restless Circle’, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shafeek Nalakath Kareem
That act of untwisting rope feels both personal and political — a gesture of undoing, but also of remembering.
Exactly. When I first used rope, it felt too nautical, too far from what I wanted to express. So I began to untwist it — to undo its structure. That gesture changed everything. To untwist is to unlearn, to take something apart so that you can see its original form. The rope retains its waves, its memory of what it was — much like hair after it’s been braided and released.
This gesture connects deeply with my memories of my mother brushing my hair when I was a child — a routine of patience, tenderness, and pain. It’s a form of invisible labour, one that carries both love and discipline. By working with rope in this way — repetitive, physical, even exhausting — I’m celebrating that labour, giving it visibility and scale.
You often stage materials in dialogue — such as the interplay between cement and fabric. What draws you to those contrasts?
In the work, In Absence We Forgot, commissioned specifically for this retrospective, the cement emerges in the folds as I scrape it across a light cotton mesh, forming a sharp rectangular frame. Cement and fabric seem to oppose each other — one intense and industrial, the other soft and fragile — but they share vulnerability. Without reinforcement, cement cracks; without structure, fabric unravels.
Together, they become interdependent. The fabric supports the cement, keeping it intact, while the cement strengthens the weave. I think of it as a quiet marriage between materials — a metaphor for human relationships, where fragility and strength coexist.
Afra Al Dhaheri, In absence we forgot, 2015; To Preserve, 2017; (from right to left). Installation view: Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin.
Your works feel deeply tied to the UAE’s built environment — the textures and tempo of a place always under construction.
People used to ask why my work was so monotone, why I avoided colour. I didn’t have an answer at first, but I later realised that this is my landscape. My surroundings are made of concrete, sand, scaffolding — the constant sound and sight of construction. That has shaped how I see and what I make.
I’ve grown attached to these materials; they feel familiar. I even use cinder blocks as pedestals because they belong to that same vocabulary. They speak of the place I come from — a place always in motion, always becoming.
Time and repetition are central to your process. How does time function in your work?
Time, for me, is circular. It bends, loops, and returns. During the pandemic, I made small paintings at home while teaching online — intimate gestures born from limitation. Later, during a residency in Milan, I collaborated with sound artist Paul McLaren on Conditioning the Knot. It began as a sound piece of me brushing woven fabric, but evolved into a video about dissolving structure — about persistence and surrender.
Afra Al Dhaheri, Conditioning the Knot, 2022. Installation view: ‘Restless Circle’, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shafeek Nalakath Kareem
These repetitive gestures allow me to slow down time. We live in such a fast-paced, globalised world that leaves little room for contemplation. I wanted to elongate time, to create space for thought and reflection — for myself and for those who encounter the work.
The other newly commissioned work, Restless Circle, anchors the exhibition, both conceptually and spatially. How did this piece come about?
Restless Circle became the heart of the exhibition. The work consists of piano wires attached to a continuously rotating motor that traces circular lines in sand. The wires are muted — they’re no longer instruments of sound but of movement, vibration, and touch.
We installed four of these works outside and two inside, creating a dialogue between interior and exterior space. As the wires turn, they gently graze the sand, marking and erasing their own traces in a continuous gesture. The motion is repetitive, almost meditative — like breathing, or the ebb and flow of thought.
Afra Al Dhaheri, Restless Circle, 2025. Installation view: Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin.
When we finally installed it, I realised it didn’t need any additional soundscape or shifting light, as I’d initially imagined. The work itself held its own rhythm. Even though it’s in constant motion, it creates stillness — a moment of contemplation. I often tell people to visit the exhibition quietly, to take their time. ‘Restless Circle’ invites you to slow down, to breathe, and to stay with what is impermanent. It’s a metaphor for fatigue and renewal — for the act of moving without necessarily arriving, yet continuing nonetheless.
‘Restless Circle’ is on view at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Gallery 6, Al Mureijah Square, from 30 August to 14 December 2025. For more information, visit sharjahart.org.
