Hunna Art is pleased to present I Dreamt We Dreamt of Eden, a collective exhibition curated by Hayaty Diaries, bringing together five artists whose practices unfold Eden as a plural, shifting, and deeply embodied condition. Rather than a singular paradise lost or found, Eden emerges here as a sensorial and psychological terrain. One shaped by memory, myth, ecology, and longing.
Across painting, sculpture, installation, and sculptures, the exhibition proposes Eden as both intimate and expansive: a garden that blooms, fades, and returns. It is felt in the quiet rhythm of breathing landscapes, in mythological creatures and hybrid bodies, in the softness of touch and the ache of transformation. Paradise appears not as permanence, but as recurrence, glimpsed in moments of beauty that surface unexpectedly and disappear just as swiftly.
Alymamah Rashed’s practice anchors Eden within cycles of spirit, body, and landscape. Drawing on spiritualism and personal mythology, her works dissolve the boundaries between the corporeal and the celestial, where botanical elements, shells, and tactile environments become vessels for transformation. Her garden is one of intuition and surrender, where memory, scent, and dream function as portals between worlds.
For Hannah Lim, Eden unfolds through mythic ornamentation and cultural hybridity. Working with sculptural forms inspired by Chinese and European decorative histories, Lim reimagines enchanted creatures and animistic objects drawn from classical literature and bestiaries. Her works conjure a garden populated by beings that migrate across cultures and time, reflecting Eden as a site of storytelling, identity-searching, and reclaimed imagination.
Raya Kassisieh approaches Eden as a phenomenological and ecological state, shaped by grief, care, and material sensitivity. Rooted in her background in textiles and Palestinian heritage, her work considers the body as a pliable form—capable of dissolution and radical transformation. Through soft and hard materials, Eden becomes a space where the human condition is renegotiated, and where vulnerability opens pathways toward renewal.
Samo Shalaby constructs Eden as a nocturnal, theatrical landscape, where myth, antiquity, and sensuality intertwine. His richly symbolic works move through cycles of night and day, sleep and awakening, metamorphosis and devotion. Gardens become dreamscapes populated by bats, blooms, relics, and guardians—spaces where scent, memory, and fantasy collapse into one another. Shalaby’s Eden is not a place we return to, but one that returns to us, lingering in dreams and desire.
Xanthe Burdett’s paintings situate Eden within the entanglement of body and nature. Drawing from personal mythology and deeply rooted experiences of place, her works blur the line between human and non-human, allowing strange creatures and fragmented forms to surface through layered glazes. Eden here is a living mesh—woven from art history, memory, landscape, and the quiet intensity of embodied presence.
Together, the artists of I Dreamt We Dreamt of Eden cultivate interconnected gardens of becoming. Eden is not fixed, nor wholly attainable; its power lies in impermanence. Through longing, imagination, and remembrance, the exhibition invites viewers to wander, pause, and breathe—reminding us that even fleeting visions of paradise are enough to propel us forward, again and again.
Press release from Hayaty Diaries and Hunna Art Gallery
Image: Samo Shalaby. The Garden of Hypnos. 2025. 60 x 80 x 2 cm. Image courtesy of the artist
