This Bloom I Borrow is a solo exhibition by Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh, presented at Efie Gallery in Dubai. The show originally ran from 17 January to 5 April 2026 and has been extended through May 2026. It marks Muluneh’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and presents a new body of work that expands the artist’s distinctive visual language. On view are more than ten previously unseen pieces that merge photography, painting and printmaking into richly layered compositions.
Developed between Muluneh’s studio in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) and her residency in Dubai, the artworks begin as carefully choreographed photographic scenes featuring body-painted models against hand-painted backdrops. The images are then transformed through silkscreen and hand-applied pigment, in collaboration with artisans in the UAE — a process that yields tactile, one-of-a-kind pieces and blurs the boundaries between photograph and object.
Bold primary colours, geometric forms, and recurring symbols — eyes, keys, masks, flowers and ancestral motifs — populate the compositions, creating a symbolic vocabulary through which Muluneh reflects on identity, resilience, and the complexity of inherited histories. Female figures frequently occupy the centre of her works, their stylised gestures and expressions suggesting narratives that move between personal memory and collective experience. The body is used as a site through which questions of identity, womanhood and cultural inheritance unfold.
Reflecting on the new series, Muluneh herself describes the project in intimate terms: “These works reflect on the dualities that shape existence and explore the dialogue between the visible and the hidden, between personal history and collective memory, power and vulnerability, faith and transformation. A meditation on the impermanence of beauty and the resilience of spirit, each piece becomes an excavation of memory and emotion, questioning how culture, belief and gender define and often confine the self.” The very title of the exhibition, This Bloom I Borrow, gestures toward this idea: the flower as a fragile, temporary form of beauty that the artist takes on loan from the world before returning it.
Within this charged visual lexicon, each motif carries a precise weight. The recurring eye references the ways in which people respond to, turn away from, or bear witness to history — a meditation on visibility and complicity that runs through all of Muluneh’s photographic work. Keys evoke memory, access and inheritance; masks point to questions of representation and self-fashioning; while the floral motifs at the heart of the new series speak to impermanence and renewal. Rendered in striking primary colours and bold geometric compositions, these symbols form a deeply considered iconography rather than decorative ornament.
About the artist
Aïda Muluneh (b. 1974, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a photographer, filmmaker, artist and educator regarded as one of the most influential voices in contemporary African photography. She earned a BA in Film, Radio and Television from Howard University (Washington, D.C., USA) in 2000. Over a career spanning more than twenty-five years, Muluneh has developed a highly recognisable aesthetic that combines staged photography with references to African iconography, architecture and textiles. Her practice often explores questions of gender, identity and representation, reflecting on the experience of African womanhood while engaging with the historical and cultural legacies of colonialism.
Her work has been featured in multiple exhibitions, including Aida Muluneh: ON THE EDGE OF PAST FUTURE (solo) at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, Germany (2024); A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, a Tate Modern exhibition shown at Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam (2024); Being: New Photography 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Dak’art Biennale (Dakar, Senegal, 2016), among others.
Muluneh has received several awards, including the Scotiabank Photography Award (Toronto, Canada, 2019) and the CRAF International Photography Award (Spilimbergo, Italy, 2010). Her works are held in major collections, such as the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington, D.C.), the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), and the Sindika Dokolo Foundation (Luanda, Angola).
Beyond her studio practice, Muluneh has played a key role in shaping photographic culture across the continent, founding initiatives such as Addis Foto Fest and Africa Print House to support artists and expand creative infrastructure. Her own approach to visibility is best summed up in her words from a recent interview: “My aim isn’t to be understood but to be remembered.”
To learn more about This Bloom I Borrow, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in exploring LOBI LOBI by Pascale Marthine Tayou, one of the online exhibitions at the Cultural Foundation, and The Gulf Through Time: Zandi’s Photographic Journey.
