Iyad Qanazea Gallery is pleased to present Self Care, Rami Farook’s first solo exhibition in Abu Dhabi, featuring around forty works on paper spanning the last fourteen years of his practice. Mostly created with ink, pastel, charcoal and lead, these creations move between image and text,capturing moments of instinct and reflection. They reveal a series that stages immediacy, gesture and the aesthetics of vulnerability.
For Rami, paper functions not simply as a support but as a critical site: fragile and absorbent, it insists on intimacy. It becomes a surface where emotions cannot be disguised and impulses cannot be undone – a space of realisation and release.
Some works take their titles from notes and thoughts written on the artist’s bedroom wall: personal fragments, prayers and affirmations that blur the line between diary and public statement. Others emerge from practices of manifestation and journaling, reflecting an ongoing internal dialogue.
Together, they form a kind of self-portrait and social landscape, holding space for resilience and the intention of growth.
The exhibition marks both a continuation and a return, as the pieces explore enduring themes of motivation, protection, fate, and faith. The act of mark-making here is not subordinate to conceptual restraint but embodies the urgency of lived experience- a language that affirms art as a form of self-healing and devotion.
In Self Care, Rami extends an inward practice outward, transforming personal reflection into collective resonance. What unfolds is an exhibition about balance and belief, fragility and strength, chaos and quiet- a meditation on the possibility of care, both for oneself and humanity.
Press release from Iyad Qanazea Gallery
Image: Rami Farook. Happiness Is Good Health, Meaningful Purpose And Love. 2025. Pastel on paper. 61 x 46cm (framed). Image courtesy of the artist and Iyad Qanazea Gallery
