Tashkeel is pleased to present Unfolding, a solo exhibition by Emirati artist Moza Al Falasi, slated to open on 15 May 2026. The exhibition will mark the culmination of her journey with the Tashkeel Critical Practice Programme (CPP), through which the artist was mentored by Luisa Menano and Hanaa Bou Hamdan, developing her practice across both research and production. Moza’s first solo presentation explores memory, loss and the passing of time, and will be on show in the Nad Al Sheba 1 Gallery in Dubai until 26th of June. Launched in 2014, Tahkeel’s Critical Practice Programme provides UAE-based artists with sustained funding, studio access and mentorship over twelve months to push the boundaries of their practice and realise ambitious projects.
Through her practice, Moza navigates life’s complexities and explores how grief reshapes our inner landscapes, inviting reflection on how personal and inherited experiences leave their mark on who we are. She uses photography as her primary means of documentation, alongside sound, painting, plaster and fabric, but she does not limit herself to recording the physical reality of a space; rather, she seeks to capture its tangible resonance.
Moza Al Falasi says: “My work is deeply rooted in the complexities of inherited grief—the sorrow passed down through generations, shaping identity in both visible and unseen ways. I explore how personal and ancestral memories become entangled with identity, weaving a tapestry of emotions that transcend time. This inquiry became more profound following the loss of my parents and, more recently, my husband, compelling me to examine grief not only as a personal experience but as an inherited weight that alters our inner landscapes. My art has become a means to navigate both the emotions of loss and the complexities of life, revealing the deeply personal and collective experience of grief. Whether my practice serves as a form of healing or a visual documentation of grief remains uncertain.”
Unfolding
Places do not end when we leave them. They continue within us, reshaped by memory, loss and the passing of time. For Moza’s first solo exhibition, Unfolding, she approaches the house not as a building to be reconstructed, but as something unstable: a field of feeling dispersed across fragments, surfaces and echoes.
Working across photography, sound, painting, plaster and fabric, she does not try to document a lost home. Instead, she traces what lingers. Textures that recall walls. Impressions pressed into soft materials. Sounds that appear and fade, much like memory itself. These gestures are not about seeing from a distance, but about touching, encountering and feeling presence in absence.
What emerges is not a single story. Childhood, family, grief and recent loss overlap and fold in on themselves. Time no longer moves in a straight line. The domestic space becomes vulnerable rather than secure, fractured, layered, incomplete.
The paintings of women alongside olive trees do not offer resolution. They suggest endurance. The olive tree, rooted and weathered, becomes a symbol of persistence, of continuing in the presence of absence.
This exhibition is not a sequence but an environment. You are not standing outside looking in. You move through an architecture of perception, where meaning is not given but emerges through stillness and encounter. What you will find here is not a house rebuilt. It is a house that remains unresolved, fragile and deeply alive.
Gerbou Collaboration
Tashkeel has extended the exhibition experience beyond the gallery through an ongoing collaboration with Gerbou Restaurant, located adjacent to the gallery. For each exhibition, Gerbou’s chefs interview the exhibiting artist, drawing on their stories, materials, and palette to create a dessert (Tashkeel Artist Special), that embodies the essence of the show. For Unfolding, Al Falasi imagined a flavour that moves between sweet and salt, reflecting the emotional landscape of the exhibition. Sweetness evokes tenderness, intimacy and the comfort of memory, while salt carries the trace of grief, tears, and what remains after loss. Together, these flavours create something layered and unresolved, much like the afterlife of a house: a place that no longer exists in the same way, yet continues to live within us.
Press release from Tashkeel
Image: Moza Al Falasi. When the Grief You’re Carrying Is Not Your Own: Traces on the Surface. Detail. 5 Digital print on archival paper. 112 x 78 cm. Image courtesy of the artist
