Restless Circle is a meditative solo exhibition by Emirati artist Afra Al Dhaheri, on display at the Sharjah Art Foundation. It traces nearly ten years of her enquiry into the structural effects of tension, repetition, and time, working across diverse materials (cotton rope, fabric, cement, and hair) to immerse the viewer in the subtle-but-hard labour of making. Curated by May Alqaydi, the show will end on 14 December 2025.
The exhibition takes its title from the recently commissioned installation Restless Circle (2025), inspired by desert plants that carve spiral patterns in sand as they move with the wind. For Al Dhaheri, this restless motion embodies mental exhaustion and collective burnout. Time in this exhibition is not simply a backdrop but a palpable component. It bends, drifts, loops, and circles back, creating a fragile balance between continuity and rupture.
Earlier works on view include In Absence We Forgot (2015) and To Revisit (2016), in which Al Dhaheri uses casting, layering, and erasure to explore what lingers when material forms begin to fade. Later pieces, To Detangle (2020) and Conditioning the Knot (2022), point to the labour of undoing. They suggest that dismantling may itself be a form of making. The series Hide and Sew (2020) reflects on domesticity, privacy, and protection shaped by Gulf life, while Spiral Staircase (2020) documents architectural exotica of Abu Dhabi (external spiral staircases) and the routines they frame. More recent works, Round and Round We Go (2023) and Pull, Tie, Release (2024), focus on the slow build-up of fatigue, accumulation, hold, and release.
The displayed art pieces ask: what happens when we linger with what is quiet, invisible, and unresolved? Through Al Dhaheri’s subtle manipulations of material, the exhibition invites us to reflect on labour, performance, endurance, and the intangible residue of repetition. The title work’s spiral becomes a state of being: endlessly moving yet arriving nowhere, echoing moments of collective exhaustion and questioning a culture of constant production.
About the artist
Afra Al Dhaheri (b. 1988, Abu Dhabi), based in her hometown, obtained a BA in Graphic Design from Zayed University in Abu Dhabi in 2011, followed by an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (USA) in 2017. She is also an Assistant Professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.
Working across sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, photography and printmaking, Al Dhaheri explores themes of time, adaptation, rigour, fragility, loss, and memory. Her work often interrogates social and cultural constructs through carefully considered material contrasts, for instance, placing the weight and permanence of concrete against the intimacy of hair. Hair occupies a distinctive place in her practice, appearing both as an actual material and as an analogue recreated through rope and other fibres.
Al Dhaheri has showcased her creations in numerous exhibitions, such as A Time Between Ashes and Roses, Aichi Triennale 2025 (Japan); Public Matter, Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial (Abu Dhabi, 2024); Give Your Weight To The Ground (solo) (Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2023); Art Here 2022 x Richard Mille Art Prize (Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2022), where she was selected as a finalist; and others.
Her residencies include the Watermill Center (New York, USA, 2023), Viafarini (Milan, Italy, 2022), and Porthmeor Studios (St Ives, Cornwall, UK, 2019). Earlier in her career, in 2014, she took part in the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (in collaboration with the Rhode Island School of Design). She also participated in Emirati Expressions 2011 and gained professional experience as an intern at both the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Venice Biennale in 2011.
In 2024, Al Dhaheri contributed to Union of Artists, a commission by Dubai Culture in collaboration with Art Dubai, created together with Khalid Albanna, Shaikha Al Mazrou, Asma Belhamar, and Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim.
For further details about Restless Circle, please go to the exhibition’s official webpage.
You might also be interested in visiting The Imaginary Museum.
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