"Left Behind"

A ZU/CACE Alumna Solo Exhibition

Left behind is a solo exhibition presenting the work of College of Arts and Creative Enterprise’s alumna Salama AlFalasi. It will be displayed from 21 March to 10 April 2023 at the CACE promenade gallery in Abu Dhabi Campus.

Salama’s creative practice highlights the theme of nostalgia with a series of mixed media photographs and paintings. She explores the idea of longing for the past after contemplating a quote by the poet Mahmoud Darwish; “And if they give us back the places, who will give us back our friends”.

The concept behind Salama’s work is inspired by her childhood home, the house that she grew up in with her extended family. The house where she has every corner memorized, down to the smallest details, with walls, areas and features that contain all her childhood experiences. In Salama’s work longing for the past and nostalgia are conceptualized as predominantly positive emotions, but beyond this warm and intimate practice and intention, there is always a sense of loss emanating from the surface of her artworks.

Through photography she documents the family house in the state that it is currently in, ever since she moved out of it fourteen years ago. The pictures are very raw and liminal, but with additional elements such as tape, stickers and pastels, an innocent, playful and childlike component is added. Through her cut-out photographs she works conversely cutting out the figures from her family album from that time. This practice of adding on and subtracting from the surface of photographs shows how complex and conflictual experiences are memory, nostalgia and the sense of time are for individuals.

Though a series of acrylic paintings of rooms, structures, and spaces of the old house, Salama conveys a feeling of perpetual emptiness and that the trigger for nostalgia, longing for the past, and the mixed positive and negative emotions felt in the present is a debased and unmediated sense of place, placeness and place-lessness.

For more: Left Behind Press Release
Opening:
March 21 | 12:30 pm

Location:
Female Promenade, Abu Dhabi Campus

For any inquiries please contact:

Dr. Ioannis Papavasileiou: Ioannis.Papavasileiou@zu.ac.ae

Salama Al Falasi: salama.sf@outlook.com