On 19 September 2025, Rizq Art Initiative (RAi) in Abu Dhabi opened The Imaginary Museum, a major collective exhibition, on view until 30 November 2025. Conceived by RAi’s Chief Curator, academic, and researcher Meena Vari, the show brings together 27 artists from the UAE and abroad.
The exhibition draws inspiration from French novelist and art historian André Malraux’s idea of a “museum without walls,” where artworks transcend their material existence and live on through memory, imagination, and interpretation. The participating artists reframe art as a vessel of remembrance, personal and collective, treating art pieces not as fixed objects but as fragments of evolving narratives.
The curatorial framework also engages with Professor of the Humanities Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of hybridity and Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco’s concept of the “open work,” foregrounding fluidity, transformation, and the active role of the viewer in shaping meaning. The exhibition reflects on how memory, identity, and cultural consciousness are renegotiated across time and place.
Emirati Artists
Among the Emirati creatives participating in The Imaginary Museum are Hassan Sharif, a pioneer of conceptual art in the Middle East, Afra Al Dhaheri, and Maktoum Al Maktoum. Sharif’s multidisciplinary practice, shaped by Fluxus and British Constructionism, investigates form, time, mathematics, and social structures. Al Dhaheri’s work explores themes of fragility, loss, memory, time, and adaptation, with hair (real and represented through rope) as a recurring medium linked to her heritage as an Emirati woman. Al Maktoum draws on lived experience, folklore, and surrealism to examine value, time, belief systems, and the psyche. His body of work created from the remains of gazelles serves as a meditation on time and memory.
Other participants from the UAE include Dhbaya Al Qubaisi, Reem Al Hashmi, Maitha Al Omaira, Camelia Mohebi, Roudhah Al Mazrouei, and Sara Al Sulaimani. Al Hashmi uses dolls to project personas, alter egos, and emotional states; she places them in situations and environments she’d like to explore or live through. Al Omaira’s practice intertwines poetry, light, and nature to reveal unseen dimensions of life and time. Meanwhile, Camelia Mohebi, inspired by healing modalities, frequencies, and sound, works with a full range of mediums and techniques, including painting across various materials: canvas, leather, velvet, and even musical instruments.
Al Mazrouei grounds her practice in cultural memory, ecological symbiosis, and archival preservation. She takes cues from her cultural heritage, incorporating natural materials from the Hajar Mountains and her ancestral village of Siji, such as sikham (charcoal) and snaah (a traditional mixture of saffron and mahlep, an aromatic spice). Al Sulaimani’s art is based on an engagement with emotional documentation. Her installations and mixed-media pieces examine how personal and cultural memory merge to shape contemporary identity.
International Perspectives
The exhibition also presents international voices. Spanish artist Solimán López explores the intersections of art, science, and ecological transition, including projects like OLEA biotoken, Manifesto Terricola, and the Harddiskmuseum. The latter is a repository of different artists’ files curated into a hard disk, which stores DNA-like information. American artist Christopher Joshua Benton, who resides in the UAE, reflects on migrant identity and labour through vibrant installations, which include wheelbarrow-based works.
Omani artist Abdulrahim Al Kendi uses satirical imagery to critique societal and religious paradoxes; his art and research often incorporate Islamic references. The Imaginary Museum features his binary translation of the Quran. Egyptian-Palestinian artist Samo Shalaby‘s practice, built on symbolism and storytelling, encompasses painting, stage design, and costume. His theatrical works blur boundaries between identity, culture, and couture, revealing dichotomous narratives.
Indian artists Indu Antony and Vikram Divecha further expand the dialogue. Antony addresses gendered spaces and the body through performances and installations. The exhibition presents her Vāsané, an artwork that distils the smell of rain. She has captured it in a bottle after about a year of collecting mud from across the city of Bengaluru and rain samples in funnels. Divecha, who works in Dubai, engages with authorship, time, migration, and labour through “found processes” that involve intervention within public and social systems.
The list of the participants also includes Alla Abdunabi (Libya/UAE), Dina Nazmi Khorchid (Palestine/USA), Jimmy Junichi Sugiura (Japan), Angel Hui Hoi Kiu (Hong Kong), Katarzyna Dzikowska (Poland/UAE), Mohsen Hazrati (Iran/Berlin), as well as Indian artists Akhil Mohan, Anupama Alias Anil, Bhartti Verma, Hasseena Suresh, Mibin Bhaskar, and Sabin Mudappathi.
About Rizq Art Initiative
Established in 2023 by art historian and collector Shafeena Yusuff Ali and curator Meena Vari, RAi is an independent cultural platform dedicated to fostering exchange between artists, curators, and researchers, particularly from the Global South. Its transdisciplinary approach spans visual arts, design, craft, technology, and curatorial research. RAi hosts residencies and fellowships, organises exhibitions and workshops, and convenes talks and symposiums, supporting both emerging and established practitioners.
For more information about The Imaginary Museum, please visit RAi’s official website.
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