The Unseen Presence : Collective Exhibition

There are forces that shape us yet remain unseen—memories embedded in landscapes, histories etched into bodies, and the silent weight of loss carried across generations.

The Unseen Presence explores these invisible imprints—traces of the past that linger, fractures that refuse to fade, and the resilience required to rebuild. It is a meditation on the interplay between absence and remembrance, destruction and renewal, and the shifting nature of identity.

In Balqis, Nizar Qabbani mourns not just a loved one but a homeland forever altered by war:

"The sweetest homeland,
One can’t stand,
Living in such a homeland.
One can’t stand,
Dying in such a homeland."

His words capture the paradox of memory—how longing and displacement can coexist, how a place can remain deeply cherished yet unbearably transformed. The artists in The Unseen Presence expand on this idea, exploring not only the weight of loss but the persistence of history in fractured realities, shifting identities, and evolving landscapes. Some works embrace nostalgia, while others question its fragility. Some reconstruct the remnants of a vanished past, while others examine the tension between survival and erasure.

Through diverse approaches, the exhibition engages with the unseen traces of memory, migration, and endurance.

Memory, Migration, and the Weight of Displacement

Ahmad Tallaa and Suheil Baddor both explore the emotional landscapes of migration, but through different perspectives. Tallaa captures the unseen presence of comfort, depicting sanctuary as fragile and fleeting. His figures exist in a liminal space, caught between nostalgia and uncertainty, between belonging and exile. His muted, haunting palettes reflect the emotional weight of those who have left their homelands, while moments of warmth hint at resilience. In contrast, Baddor examines the unseen presence of waiting, portraying figures suspended in time, their identities in flux. His compositions, layered with geometric structures and expressive abstraction, emphasize the endurance required to navigate displacement. While Tallaa’s works search for solace, Baddor’s paintings underscore the disorientation of exile.

Similarly, Ibrahim Hamid and Suheil Baddor share a focus on displaced women, yet their approaches diverge. Baddor abstracts the female figure, distorting identities to mirror the instability of memory. Hamid, however, emphasizes the expressive power of facial features, using bold brushstrokes to highlight emotion. Eyes serve as portals of silent narratives, revealing the weight of exile and survival. While Baddor leans into fragmentation, Hamid bridges abstraction and realism, underscoring endurance over erasure. Both artists acknowledge the resilience of women who carry not just personal loss but collective histories of displacement.

The Fragility of Memory and the Erosion of Place

The instability of memory—both personal and collective—lies at the heart of Besher Koushaji and Hikmat Naeem’s works. Koushaji deconstructs portraiture, capturing the unseen presence of memory as something fluid and unstable. Faces emerge and dissolve, their fragmented forms mirroring the way memories shift between clarity and erosion. His work embodies the exhaustion, longing, and resilience of those shaped by displacement.

Hikmat Naeem, by contrast, expands this theme beyond the human figure, examining lost cities where architecture dissolves into abstraction. His textured compositions evoke shifting urban landscapes, blending fading structures with figures that seem to disintegrate. Using oil and mixed media, he layers deep blues and earthy ochres to capture both nostalgia and transformation. While Koushaji’s work focuses on how individuals carry history within them, Naeem reveals how cities, too, bear the marks of time, war, and migration.

Endurance, Silence, and the Body in Space

Eyad Jouda and Bassam Kyrillos explore physical and psychological endurance, but through different media and materials. Jouda’s wire-bound sculptures embody the unseen presence of silence, balancing movement and stillness. His precariously poised figures reflect the psychological strain of migration, where survival is a delicate equilibrium between resistance and surrender.

Kyrillos, in contrast, investigates the unseen presence of sacrifice, merging human forms with crumbling architectural elements. His haunting imagery presents figures that appear to emerge from—and dissolve into—eroded textures, emphasizing the vulnerability of both individuals and civilizations. While Jouda’s sculptures suggest resilience through balance and movement, Kyrillos’ works evoke histories of destruction, displacement, and survival through decay and fragmentation.

Mahmood Al Daoud also engages with destruction and renewal but through a more organic lens. His layered textures and abstract compositions depict cycles of erosion and rebirth. His works reflect the persistence of memory, where loss is not absolute but rather part of a larger process of transformation. While Kyrillos anchors his work in the material decay of built environments, Al Daoud reimagines memory as something that both disintegrates and endures.

Reconstructing Nostalgia and Cultural Memory

Unlike the other artists, Kamal Al Zoubi approaches nostalgia with a sense of playfulness. His LEGO-Inspired Arabic Tower transforms childhood memories and linguistic traditions into sculptural forms, bridging heritage with contemporary reinterpretation. Where others explore nostalgia through themes of decay, loss, and endurance, Al Zoubi preserves it through joyful abstraction. His works maintain a tangible connection to the past, where heritage is not something mourned but something continuously reimagined.

A Presence That Refuses to Disappear

Despite their differences, the artists in The Unseen Presence collectively examine how memory, identity, and history shape our understanding of the world. Some, like Tallaa and Baddor, evoke the emotional limbo of exile, while others, like Koushaji and Naeem, engage with the instability of memory. Jouda and Kyrillos explore endurance from opposing angles—one through balance, the other through decay—while Al Daoud and Kyrillos navigate destruction and transformation in contrasting tones. Al Zoubi stands apart, using nostalgia as a bridge between past and present, rather than a weight of loss.

Together, these works reveal that presence is not always seen but always felt. History does not simply disappear—it lingers in landscapes, in faces, in the spaces left behind. Whether through waiting, sacrifice, memory, or silence, the unseen forces that shape human existence persist, leaving traces that refuse to be erased.

In a world where displacement, loss, and transformation continue to shape lives, The Unseen Presence asks:

How do we carry the invisible weight of history?
Can what is lost ever truly disappear?
And in the face of destruction, what fragments of our past do we hold onto—what do we choose to rebuild?

This exhibition is not just about what has vanished, but about what endures. Even in the absence of what once was, something always remains—a trace, a shadow, an unseen presence shaping the way we exist in the world.