Alla Abdunabi’s first solo exhibition presents a new body of work that critiques and engages with simulacra, a concept used in philosophy and cultural studies to analyze how symbols shape our perceptions of what is accepted as “real.” The work emphasizes the ways that iconography has been preserved and restored across different periods of history. By doing so, it raises crucial questions about how symbols not only endure but gain new significance as they are continually reintroduced into contemporary contexts. This restoration process, rather than simply reviving a historical moment or object, often reinforces the power structures embedded within them. Through the preservation of these icons in art, museums, or public spaces, Abdunabi investigates their influence and how they shape cultural and political narratives into the future.
This dynamic echoes Philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s notion that for ethnology or anthropology to exist, its object must metaphorically “die.” In this context, the once vibrant and culturally embedded object becomes a frozen artifact—stripped of its original function or meaning—yet continues to exert influence as a simulacrum.
Central to the exhibition is the narrative of the Barbary lion, whose physical extinction and symbolic immortality serve as the perfect illustration of this phenomenon. Once native to North Africa, the Barbary lion was hunted into extinction by imperial powers, becoming a casualty of both ecological destruction and colonial assertion of dominance over nature. Yet, even in death, the Barbary lion lives on as a potent symbol of imperial power and grandeur.
The exhibition uses the lion’s duality—its mortal extinction and its symbolic resurrection—to explore how colonial violence often outlives the physical acts of subjugation, continuing to exert influence through symbols and representations. The lion’s body is both dead and immortal—its real, physical form eradicated, but its image preserved and exploited to assert power. This reanimation mirrors broader practices of colonialism, where the tangible effects of violence and exploitation are enshrined into the very institutions that continue to shape cultural memory today. By framing the lion’s image as a symbol of both destruction and immortality, the exhibition questions the ethics of restoring and displaying objects that carry colonial histories and what “care“ means in these contexts.
Alla Abdunabi is participating in the 2025 cycle of the 421 Artistic Development Program, mentored by Jolaine Frizzell. The Artistic Development Program is an annual capacity-building program that gives early-career artists in the UAE the opportunity to develop an experimental body of work in a solo exhibition for the first time.
Press release from 421 Arts Campus
Image: Alla Abdunabi. Are your memories of me enough for you? Detail. Photography by Ismail Noor / Seeing Things. Image courtesy of 421 Arts Campus
