May Alqaydi reflects on displacement, interconnected histories and the shifting geographies in this collaboration between Sharjah Art Foundation and Aranya Art Center in Guangzhou.
11 June 2026
Bringing together more than 70 works from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, ‘In Absence and in Presence’ traces artistic dialogues across West Asia, South Asia, Africa and their diasporas. Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, video and textile, the exhibition considers land not simply as territory, but as memory, imagination and lived experience. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi and Damien Zhang alongside teams from Sharjah Art Foundation and Aranya Art Center, the exhibition marks the Foundation’s largest presentation in Asia to date. Assistant Curator May Alqaydi speaks about displacement, artistic lineages and rethinking art history beyond Western frameworks.
The exhibition treats land as more than geography, as something lived and imagined. How did this idea guide your curatorial approach and choice of works?
May Alqaydi: The artists in this exhibition all lived through periods of political upheaval, and many experienced displacement, whether through study abroad, migration, or exile. Over time, their relationship to land stopped being about a physical place and became something else: a layering of memories, feelings, associations, and the words used to describe all of that. Land, for them, is assembled rather than given. That’s what guided the exhibition approach: we were looking for artists whose work reflects this shift, in which land operates as an imaginative and emotional space as much as a geographic one.
When bringing together artists from different regions and diasporas, how did you balance shared connections with the need to respect distinct histories?
We didn’t approach it as a balancing act so much as a recognition that these connections already existed. Despite different origins, these artists shared a language, not linguistically, but in how they’ve engaged with questions of land, belonging, and displacement through their work. Many of them had also crossed paths in real life, worked together, or been influenced by each other, so the exhibition followed those threads in its concept.
What stood out to you when placing modern and contemporary works in dialogue? Did you notice more continuity or tension between them?
Continuity, definitely, and something beyond what you’d expect. The works kept speaking to each other across time in ways that felt inevitable rather than constructed. These conversations, like those of Akram Zaatari and Hassan Sharif, Baya and Farideh Lashai, with Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, and Aref El Rayess extend beyond the gallery walls. What was interesting is that as we were developing the list of works, we kept finding these threads already there, exchanges and influences that existed long before we placed the works next to each other. So simply, the exhibition didn’t create those dialogues; it just made them visible.
The title suggests both absence and presence. How does this idea take shape in the exhibition, especially in relation to displacement and memory?
The title comes from Ahmed Morsi, whose work has always circled questions of memory and identity, what persists, what slips away. We were drawn to it because it captures something the exhibition keeps returning to: what remains of a land when you’re no longer in it, and what disappears even when you are. What imprints itself on the mind, and what only exists in physical form. And the tension between absence and presence isn’t simply resolved in the show; it’s held open, which felt right.
As one of the first exhibitions of its kind in China, what kinds of conversations did you hope it would open in this context?
It’s also our first presentation of the SAF collection in Asia, which matters a great deal in terms of how we position ourselves within a broader global art conversation. China, being the first country to host this show, reflects on where we want to be in dialogue. We hope it opens up real visibility for our region’s art scene, one that has been navigating constant socio-political shifts for decades. There’s something important about looking at these works now, when history feels like it’s repeating itself, and seeing how artists have always been in conversation with that, holding space between past, present, and possible futures.
The exhibition highlights human figures as carriers of history. How do these figures shape or complicate ideas of land and belonging?
Human figures carry history in ways that land itself cannot, through what they wear, who they gather with, how they move, and what their bodies have been through. A big part of what shapes a place is the people who inhabit it and how they relate to it. In the exhibition, the figures aren’t just representations of individuals; they’re accumulations of social and historical experiences. They raise the question of where belonging is actually located, whether in the land or in the people who carry it with them.
The collection aims to rethink art history from a South-South and East-East perspective. How is this reflected in the exhibition itself?
The “standard” art historical framework tends to route everything through the West, its influence, validation, and context. What the collection and this exhibition try to do is map a different set of connections: between West Asia, South Asia, and Africa, and between those regions and East Asia now. The works show that artists in these regions were in dialogue with one another, exchanging ideas, sharing references, and building movements independently of, and sometimes long before, Western recognition arrived. Presenting this in China adds another node to a network that was never as peripheral as art history suggested. The conversation was always happening; it just wasn’t always being mapped.
How did the specific site and context of Aranya Art Center in Guangzhou influence the way the exhibition was presented?
The collaboration itself shaped things significantly. The show was co-curated with Damien Zhang and the Aranya Art Center team, which meant the presentation was developed between two institutions with different contexts and audiences. Guangzhou is also a city with a deep history of trade and exchange; it’s not incidental that a show about interconnected regions and diasporas lands there. The thematic structure of the three galleries, land as contested place, land as imaginative space, the human figure as carrier of history, was developed to work across both institutional contexts, for audiences who might come to this show without existing familiarity with this art scene.
This exhibition is on view at Aranya Art Center, Guangzhou, China, until 30 August 2026.
