Witness an evolving relationship between art, archives and architecture this September
If you’ve followed contemporary art from the Arab world over the last couple of decades, chances are you’ve come across the name Ala Younis.
This fall, she finally gets a mid-career retrospective with ‘Past of a Temporal Universe’, and it’s happening right here in the region.
The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery is now hosting Younis’ first institutional survey in the Arab world.
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It’s a big moment, not just for the artist, but for anyone interested in the evolving relationship between art, archives, architecture, and the layered histories of this region.
The exhibition spans 20 years of Younis’ work, which is hard to categorize in a single sentence.
Her practice sits at the intersection of research and art-making, blending found materials, historical documents, and personal narratives into carefully constructed installations.
Expect to see everything from mosaics and textiles to drawings, films, and archival assemblages.
Some of the works are brand new commissions made especially for this show, while others are key projects from earlier stages of her career, revisited, reframed, and brought into conversation with one another.
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One of the more compelling threads running through the show is how Younis uses objects and stories to trace both the big picture of regional politics and the quieter, personal shifts that shape daily life.
Her background in architecture and visual culture really comes through; each piece feels like it’s investigating not just what happened, but how things are built (and unbuilt) over time: cities, memories, revolutions, relationships.
This isn’t a flashy blockbuster show. It’s slower, more layered. You might find yourself reading an old magazine or watching a video on loop longer than you expected.
But that’s kind of the point. Younis invites you to dig, not just into her work, but into your own ways of remembering, interpreting, and understanding where we’ve been and where we’re heading.
So, if you’re in Abu Dhabi, make sure you head to NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery.
Free. Until 18 January, NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery. For further information, visit publicprograms.nyuad.nyu.edu
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