XVA Gallery presents White, a thoughtful, multilayered exhibition that brings together faculty members from the Academy of Visual Arts at the University of the Arts Sharjah. Rather than treating white simply as a colour, the show approaches it as a conceptual field, one tied to light, memory, silence, emptiness, spirituality, and perception. The participating artists examine how white can function simultaneously as presence and absence, material, and metaphor. Curated by artist and professor Tor Seidel, who also contributes two of his artworks, the exhibition will run through 21 May 2026.
The show invites visitors to imagine white not merely as a neutral tone, but as a state of transformation and inquiry. Artists working in different mediums approach the theme from varied perspectives. For sculptors, white becomes linked to material processes such as carving stone or shaping clay. For painters and printmakers, the exhibition raises questions about negative space, tonal balance, chiaroscuro, and the emotional weight of blankness. Photographers and video artists, meanwhile, explore white as an effect of illumination itself.
Curator Tor Seidel, whose own artistic practice frequently examines image culture, perception, and systems of representation, frames the exhibition as both an aesthetic and philosophical exploration. Under his direction, White becomes less about uniformity and more about ambiguity. White can signify peace and stillness, but also erasure, distance, or detachment. It can evoke sacred architecture, institutional spaces, modernist ideals, or even the digital blankness of contemporary screens. The show encourages viewers to reflect on how meaning changes depending on cultural context, medium, and personal experience.
The participating creatives include Palestinian interior architect, designer, and researcher Georgina Abood, who contributes her project, White Archive / Silent Narratives. Drawing on photographs, handwritten documents, and archival materials connected to Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Nazareth, this project reflects on histories of forced migration and the fragile persistence of memory. By wrapping and partially obscuring the materials, Abood transforms white into a metaphor for silence, erasure, and preservation simultaneously.
Dr Mohamed Yousif displays his sculptural works inspired by the openness of childhood creativity, where material, play, and invention coexist without rigid boundaries. Through restrained visual language and subtle textures, he reflects on white as a space of possibility rather than emptiness. Iraqi sculptor Muatasim Alkubaisy, famous for his bronze art pieces, showcases Trade of the Sacred, a work that examines the moment when spiritual value becomes a commodity shaped by systems of power and exchange.
Fashion designer Alina Erimia, whose artistic language is influenced by engraving techniques of the 15th century, presents two artworks that investigate texture, materiality, and spatial perception. Textile artist and fashion designer Andreea Lonhardt-Muresan‘s installation White, Interrupted considers white not as emptiness but as a dense concentration of matter and illumination. Through subtle disruptions in surface and form, Lonhardt-Muresan examines how white can become fragmented, unstable, and emotionally charged.
Multimedia designer and digital artist Muhammad Asad Iqbal contributes Layers of Connection, an interactive video installation conceived as a living metaphor for human connection. The work reflects on white as a field of tension, a space where visibility and obscurity continuously interact. Artist and printmaker Joshua Watts presents Lost in Plain Sight, an art piece examining human perception and the ways people interact with their environments. Watts questions the nature of visibility itself, encouraging viewers to reconsider what they routinely overlook in everyday life.
Visual artist Sheikha Maryam Al Qassimi, whose practice explores the circulation of memory, information, and internal narratives, displays White Matter, an ongoing exploration of the structures and networks of the human mind. In this artwork, the colour becomes an active generative field rather than a neutral background, referencing the brain’s “white matter” responsible for communication and connectivity. Syrian artist Thaier Helal showcases White Landmarks, a painting composed through layered textures in which white serves as both presence and absence, evoking earth, stone, and water while suggesting silence and erasure.
Meanwhile, Dr Iman Ibrahim, whose work focuses on sustainable design, regenerative materials, smart cities, and biophilic systems, presents Biogenesis, a luminous sculptural piece inspired by cellular structures and organic growth. Composed of intricate lattice-like tendrils connecting translucent orb forms, the work reflects on creation, transformation, and the boundless potential contained within simplicity.
White resists spectacle in favour of attentiveness. In an era dominated by visual excess and constant stimulation, the exhibition proposes slowness, reflection, and sensitivity to nuance. The recurring use of pale surfaces, diffused light, and restrained compositions prompts viewers to notice subtle details: the texture of paper, the shadow cast by a sculptural edge, or the tonal variation within a seemingly monochrome field. These quiet gestures become central to the experience of the show.
As a whole, White demonstrates how a single concept can generate remarkably diverse artistic responses. The exhibition transforms white into a site of contradiction and possibility, at once material and immaterial, visible and elusive. The show offers an elegant meditation on perception, space, and the many meanings carried by the simplest of colours.
To get more information about White, please go to the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in visiting From the Perspective of Language by Sara Naim and Follow the Snail by Nazilya Nagimova. We would also recommend that you read our article about three sustainable female designers from the Middle East.
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