Bringing together over fifty works from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, ‘Image Keepers’ traces six decades of artistic experimentation and engagement through the lens of photography.
Rula Halawani, From ‘The Bride is Beautiful, But She is Married to Another Man’, 2017. Sharjah Art Foundation Collection. Photo: Ivan Erofeev
The Sharjah Art Foundation opens ‘Image Keepers’, the first exhibition to inaugurate its new Photography Gallery in Al Manakh, Sharjah. On view from 8 November 2025 to 26 April 2026, the exhibition brings together more than fifty works by seventeen artists and collectives from the Foundation’s collection, exploring the photographic image as a site of memory, resistance, and artistic inquiry.
Presenting works in formats ranging from studio portraits to multimedia installations, ‘Image Keepers’ offers a panoramic view of how artists have used photography to document, question, and reimagine reality across geographies and generations. Together, the works navigate six decades of sociopolitical transformation and modernisation, mapping the shifting terrain of image-making in postcolonial and contemporary contexts.
Portraits of Place and Identity
The first chapter of the exhibition presents portraits that testify to the diversity of lived experience across regions and times. These works record the intersections of ethnic, civic, and diasporic identities while revealing the intricate bonds between people and place.
In her series The Bride is Beautiful, But She is Married to Another Man (2017), Rula Halawani captures Palestinians moments before border checks, confronting the viewer with the quiet resilience and endurance of a people under occupation. Sunil Gupta’s Black Experience (1986/2021) transports us to 1980s Britain, offering rare, intimate glimpses into the lives of diasporic South Asian communities during a time when the term “Black” broadly encompassed all people of colour.
Absence, Conflict, and the Poetics of Memory
The exhibition’s next section turns to the unseen—images that engage with conflict, migration, and the traces left behind. In Mame-Diarra Niang’s Léthé (2021) and Same Guent Guii (2021), abstraction and dreamlike imagery evoke questions of identity, belonging, and self-discovery. Susan Hefuna’s Landscape/Cityscape (1999–2002), shot with a pinhole camera across Cairo and the Nile Delta, immerses viewers in textured, atmospheric scenes where memory fades and re-emerges like light on paper.
On the upper floor, photography becomes a material language in its own right. Artists engage archival, performative, and speculative approaches to reimagine collective histories. Mohammed Kazem’s Window (2003–2005) reflects on the rapid urban transformation of the UAE, documenting both the construction of new structures and the human stories within them. In contrast, Fehras Publishing Practices’ Disappearances, Appearances, Publishing (2015–2018) constructs a pseudo-archive of more than 15,000 publications from the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, revealing how publishing shaped cultural identity and historical consciousness across the region.
Women as Guardians of Memory
The exhibition takes its title from Zineb Sedira’s seminal video installation Gardiennes d’images [Image Keepers] (1998–2001), a three-channel work that honours women as custodians of cultural memory. The piece centres on Safia Kouaci, who preserved the photographic archive of her late husband, Algerian photojournalist Mohamed Kouaci. Through Sedira’s lens, remembrance becomes a living act of resistance and continuity, linking generations through shared images and stories.
A Panoramic Vision of Photography
Other featured artists include Amina Zoubir, Bani Abidi, Basma Al Sharif, Hrair Sarkissian, Kader Attia, Khadija Saye, Latif Al Ani, Rashid Mahdi, Rika Noguchi, and Rushdi Anwar. Together, their works form a powerful, emotional journey spanning continents and decades.
‘Image Keepers’ celebrates photography not only as a tool for documentation but as a medium that challenges perception and holds space for the overlooked and the forgotten.
Curated by Jiwon Lee, Head of Curatorial, with Nada Ammagui and Osemudiamen Ekore, and supported by Souraya Kreidieh and Shahd Murshed of the Collection Department, the exhibition marks a new chapter in Sharjah Art Foundation’s dedication to expanding the visibility of photography in the region.
‘Image Keepers’ runs from 8 November 2025 to 26 April 2026 at the Photography Gallery, Al Manakh, Sharjah. Free admission. For more information and to book tickets, visit sharjahart.org.
