In the Space of Becoming at Aisha Alabbar Gallery is the first solo exhibition by Emirati artist Alia Hussain Lootah, set to open on 17 January and remain on view until 10 March 2026. The show displays paintings, objects, and sculptures that form a quiet yet deeply personal narrative about kinship, home, and the way forms literally “come into being” before the viewer’s eyes. For Dubai’s January 2026 art week, the exhibition offers a contemplative counterpoint to the city’s louder festivals, replacing visual noise with a careful, almost meditative look at everyday life and motherhood.
In the Space of Becoming grows out of years of internal work. Lootah describes the process as one of constant doubt and boundary‑testing: questioning what can still be considered art and what remains a personal experience that does not need a public form.
The exhibition brings together three series, each in its own medium, yet all structured around recurring lines, soft curves, and forms that echo cells, embraces, fragments of architecture or household objects. Sculptures and objects often appear as transitional states, as if the form has been caught mid‑growth or contraction, reinforcing the idea of an ongoing process rather than static completion. The works explore “becoming” rather than fixed states, the in‑between moments: between child and adult, home and outside world, object and the body that touches or moves around it.
The “domestic” motif is not decorative: textures, rhythms, and repetitions point to the routines of care, the “invisible labour” that rarely becomes the subject of exhibitions yet fully shapes a life and a body. Through abstraction, the artist creates instead a kind of diary of relationships translated into lines, volumes and weight.
Lootah’s exhibition offers a rare pause, a space to slow down and encounter a side of the Emirati scene that speaks about the private and the quiet. The show is also an important example of how Emirati women artists of the 1980s generation approach motherhood, belonging, and home not as illustration but as a field for formal and spatial experimentation.
About the artist
Alia Hussain Lootah (b. 1987, Dubai) is a graduate of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship (SEAF), where she began to explore motherhood through sculpture, gradually shifting from figurative imagery to a more abstract, inward‑looking visual language. In recent years, she has focused her practice on the relationship between mother and child, as well as on broader questions of kinship and the domestic sphere.
To get more information about In the Space of Becoming, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in reading our article about festivals and fairs in the UAE in 2026.
To stay connected with the latest art news, feel free to follow our Telegram channel.
