Mesh & Mayhem is a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary Emirati artist Talal Al Najjar, on display at Tabari Artspace Dubai until 24 October 2025. Curated by Salem AlSuwaidi, it unfolds as a dynamic exploration of the fragile balance between structure and chaos, where digital architectures, material interventions, and local memory intertwine. Across a series of new sculptural, video, and mixed-media works, Al Najjar examines how the digital realm collides with the physical world.
The exhibition’s title captures its conceptual duality. The mesh evokes connectivity, networks, and the ordered systems of the digital age, while mayhem introduces rupture, distortion, and the glitch. Al Najjar’s process embodies this tension. 3D-printed bioplastics and CGI forms are reworked by hand with industrial materials, automotive paint, and scorched vinyl, so sleek, computer-generated precision is transformed into something tactile and volatile. His works oscillate between control and entropy, evoking the sensory overload of a world saturated by images and data.
In the immersive environment of the exhibition, the viewer navigates shifting surfaces and unstable geometries that reflect the contemporary condition of perpetual digital flux. Through its layered surfaces and visual noise, the show suggests that within the chaos of the digital and the physical, new forms of beauty and meaning emerge: fractured, fluid, and alive.
About the artist
Talal Al Najjar (b. 1999), who divides his time between Dubai and Los Angeles (USA), holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL, USA) and an MFA from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena (CA, USA). His practice, which spans sculpture, video, CGI animation, sound, and writing, often merges research, archiving, and distortion to create speculative and absurdist reflections on postmodern life. Through his work, Al Najjar investigates the intersections of heritage, technology, and hyperreality. He also explores how local identities are remade within the globalised, networked world.
Al Najjar has displayed his artworks in different exhibitions, such as Maknana: An Archaeology of New Media Arts in the Arab World (Diriyah Art Futures, Riyadh, KSA, 2025) Înca: Presenting the Salam Art Collection (Miraz ArtSpace, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, 2025); Petro-Ghareebo: NAUSEA (solo) (Tabari Artspace x Art Dubai, Dubai, 2024); and Chicago Art Book Fair (Chicago, IL, USA, 2019), among the others.
The artist has received a number of awards and grants (for example, the Dirwaza Microfund for Creative Access Grant (2022)), and undertaken several residencies, such as Italy & United Arab Emirates: Digital Arts As A Vehicle For Accessibility To Cultural Heritage, Youth Exchange Residency (Rome, Italy, 2024) and ICD Brookfield Place Arts Residency (Dubai, 2023). His works are part of private and public collections in the UAE and USA, including the Dubai Collection and HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nayhan Collection (Abu Dhabi).
To get more information about Mesh & Mayhem, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
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