Featuring works by Samuel Fosso, Aïda Muluneh, Kelani Abass, Abeer Sultan, and Sumayah Fallatah, ‘time heals, just not quick enough…’ opens this June in Alserkal Avenue
Kelani Abass, Scrap of Evidence, (Akaba), 2024. Digital print, cornerstone, wooden block, letterpress type, acrylic and oil on board, 42 x 51 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Efie Gallery.
In its second exhibition at the new Alserkal Avenue space, Efie Gallery presents ‘time heals, just not quick enough…’, a group show curated by Ose Ekore. Running from 1 June to 30 July 2025, the exhibition brings together a multigenerational cohort of contemporary artists—Samuel Fosso, Aïda Muluneh, Kelani Abass, Abeer Sultan, and Sumayah Fallatah—whose work reflects on the complexities of memory, healing, and identity through photography and film.
The exhibition explores the temporal nature of recovery and remembrance, offering powerful visual narratives that consider the passage of time as both a burden and a salve. With practices rooted in personal history, cultural reflection, and formal experimentation, the featured artists reveal how time shapes individual and collective experience—often too slowly, yet always irreversibly.
Sumayah Fallatah’s practice navigates family memory, race, and migration within the context of the African diaspora in the Arab world. Her 2024 installation I became you, so I lost myself layers of archival family photographs with indigo-dyed textiles and red thread to reflect on the emotional costs of cultural assimilation. In Fruits of Meditation (2023), a dual-channel video piece, Fallatah revisits a childhood memory of her father’s meditative fruit-squeezing ritual—an act captured in two parallel narratives that bridge generational and emotional understanding.
Abeer Sultan’s Agua Viva merges personal ancestry with marine mythology. Drawing on her family’s migration from West Africa to Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, Sultan creates an otherworldly cosmography through photography, collage, and video. Images of jellyfish, corals, and shells form fictional artefacts and lost histories, imagining new mythology for future generations of the African diaspora on the Arabian Peninsula.
Kelani Abass contributes mixed-media works that combine photography, letterpress, and painting—echoing the legacy of his father’s printing press. Blurring the lines between analogue and digital, his practice meditates on memory, loss, and the entanglement of identity across generations. Through delicate layering of material and meaning, Abass’s work invites viewers to consider the passage of time as a slow, accumulative process.
In a rare showing, the exhibition includes 20 works from Samuel Fosso’s seminal 70’s Lifestyle series (1974–78). These early self-portraits—produced in the artist’s studio in Bangui, Central African Republic—were inspired by magazine images of African American fashion and culture brought by American Peace Corps volunteers. Channelling figures like soul icon James Brown and Nigerian musician Prince Nico Mbarga, Fosso uses photography to perform and subvert notions of identity, style, and power.
Aïda Muluneh presents images from her ongoing exploration of African womanhood through surrealist visual language. Boldly composed with saturated primary colours, her photographs combine ceremonial garments, masks, and face painting with Ethiopian cultural references. Muluneh’s work subverts conventional depictions of African women, reframing the camera as a political and symbolic tool for reclamation and visibility.
Curator Ose Ekore remarks: “In an era shaped by urgency, ‘time heals, just not quick enough…’ invites viewers to slow down and reconsider their relationship with time. The curatorial direction emerged organically, guided by the themes the participating artists have been thoughtfully exploring in their practices.”
A Nigerian curator based in the UAE, Ekore is known for his work at the intersection of African histories, public art, and community engagement. He is co-founder of the community-driven library project Bootleg Griot—currently in residence at Efie Gallery’s Rekord Gallery—and serves as a curatorial assistant at Sharjah Art Foundation.
Founded by the Ghanaian families Valentina, Kwame, and Kobi Mintah, Efie Gallery represents artists of African origin and the global African diaspora. Since its founding in 2021, the gallery has quickly established itself as a key platform for African contemporary art in the Middle East. Its relocation in 2025 to Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue—within the Al Quoz Creative Zone—signals a new chapter for the gallery as it expands its curatorial and public programming.
In addition to its exhibitions, Efie Gallery hosts residencies and community collaborations that foster cross-cultural exchange between Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. The gallery also houses a unique collection of rare vinyl and shellac records worldwide, reflecting its founders’ belief in the interplay between art, music, and memory.
As its name suggests—Efie being the Twi word for “home”—the gallery is committed to creating a space of belonging grounded in culture, history, and identity. ‘time heals, just not quick enough…’ continues this mission, offering viewers a space to reflect on the intricate relationship between the past, present, and what remains unresolved.
The exhibition will be on view from the 1st of June until the 30th of July 2025. For more information, please visit Efie Gallery.
