Firetti Contemporary, in collaboration with Hunna Art Gallery, is proud to present I’m Never Coming Back, a solo exhibition by artist Aidha Badr (b.1996, Brooklyn, NY), opening to the public on September 19, 2025, and running until November 7, 2025.
Motherhood marks a quiet yet profound transformation. It arrives without ceremony, altering the texture of days and the weight of thoughts until even the smallest parts of oneself feel unfamiliar. Not replaced, but carefully rearranged.
In I’m Never Coming Back, Aidha Badr paints from this liminal space, between daughter and mother, between who she was and who she is becoming. The works unfold like diary entries: fragile, unfiltered, and emotionally exposed. They capture the disorientation of a silent unraveling, where identity hovers between what has passed and what is still taking form.
Badr’s earlier practice focused on untangling the roots of female desire and exploring the intricacies of the daughter-mother relationship, notably by scrutinizing the way the maternal figure and its representations play a significant role in childhood and the early stages of a girl’s development. In this new body of work, the lens shifts inward. Now painting as a mother herself, Badr’s canvases have become a space to project her own vulnerabilities, reflections, and lived experiences. They become intimate territories where personal memory, maternal identity, and self-exploration intersect.
Such are the self-portraits: they are fragmented, portraying the artist as a distant Madonna -aloof, protective, and enigmatic. Cropped tightly and rendered with deliberate restraint, they withhold intimacy while conveying a quiet authority. Handwritten text punctuates the paintings, echoing fragments of the artist’s inner monologue: “Stay with me a little longer,” “Nothing ever happens”. These words trace the subtle shifts of identity that motherhood entails.
This tension between vulnerability and resilience is mirrored in the introduction of the horse, which emerges as a central motif and mirrors the artist’s own process of acceptance and change. Throughout the exhibition, it takes multiple shapes: a dissected toy, evoking the fragility and reconstruction of identity; two foals, captured mid-movement, suggesting vulnerability and tentative exploration; three studies that culminate in the work I Am Not the Same and I Am Never Coming Back, where a fully formed and proud horse dominates a toy version of itself. This final image embodies the ultimate acceptance of change, the reconciliation of past and present selves, and the recognition that growth requires both letting go and standing fully in one’s transformed identity. In the artist’s words, “accepting change without fighting it—to move forward quietly, with grace. It’s not about running or escaping anymore. It’s about being present with whatever’s shifted, and finding a kind of freedom in that.”
Ultimately, I’m Never Coming Back is a meditation on the female psyche, on what is lost and what is gained in transition. The voices of the artist, as a daughter and now as a mother, are layered and folded into each other. The daughter remains present: curious, playful, sensitive, always looking back. The mother, quieter and more grounded, brings a protective yet unresolved weight. Together, they shape this new body of work that reflects the dualities of becoming and gives space to a transformation experienced by so many yet so seldom spoken of.
Press release from Firetti Contemporary
Image: Aidha Badr. Somebody up there loves me. 2025. Oil on canvas. 180 x 258 cm. Image courtesy of the artist, Hunna Art Gallery and Firetti Contemporary
