Ala Ebtekar and Huda Lutfi

Gallery 1 
Ala Ebtekar: Safina
The Third Line is pleased to present Safina, the final chapter of Ala Ebtekar’s solo exhibitions trilogy. This project continues Ala’s commitment to folding space and time onto itself through painting, drawing, and premieres a new installation that shifts harmonies of landscape and horizon.

In the titular work Safina, the book is examined not only as an art object, but as a vehicle to complicate notions of inertia and travel between space and time. Safina is an oblong shaped manuscript, containing a compendium of potent knowledge fields: history, philosophy, astronomy, and most often, poetry.

Safina’s etymology and current linguistic use leans towards several variants of a vessel designed for transportation: a ship, aircraft and even spacecraft. The centerpiece of the exhibition is an asymmetrical heptagonal platform that serves as topography for a suite of safinas, newly produced artist books, and never before seen reclaimed materials. Arranged in a manner to form new taxonomies and constellations of meaning, this Safina revisits the existing model, now displaying a new terrain in tandem with new works.

As a central contour, with peaks and valleys, Safina gently displays Ala’s long-standing interest in the depiction of space and time. The structure easily could be both 15th and 25th century, as a spaceship simultaneously landed and moving. Culminating altogether past and future, speculative and impending, Safina presents new portals to understanding the potentials of these vessels, as they were physically kept close to the heart, and here an object that travels in and between the most potent of landscapes.

Gallery 2
Huda Lutfi: Still
The Third Line is pleased to present Still, Huda Lutfi’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. Featuring new works produced over the last year and a half, the exhibition presents a different approach to Huda’s practice as she turns to minimalist and calligraphic abstractions to create compositions she calls “paper sculptures.”

Using recycled materials or her own discarded artworks, Huda employs a process of assemblage using paper cut outs—a signature technique in her artistic practice. Organic and geometric shapes of bold or muted tones are meticulously juxtaposed to create compositions that allow the shapes to co-exist and achieve a kind of visual balance. As she says, each of these creations works like a puzzle or a game of problem solving.

Cairo’s urban complexity has always been at the heart of Huda’s work. She manipulates disparate images and objects to re-invent a personal vision of the city in which she lives, its histories and on going events. In doing so, Huda simultaneously comments on the political relevance and social context through both metaphorical and literal visuals. In this series, however, Huda’s usual commentary takes a quieter approach; while her abstracted works may seem to lack social and political avowals, they reflect a deeper and more personal, introspective state.

Accompanying the collages are four new sculptures: Difficult to Unravel, Fan, Hanger, and Silent Journal, which display a tantalizing intersection between resilience and fragility. In Difficult to Unravel, multiple rolls of flax thread are painted in metallic silver, stiffening the threads and making them difficult to untangle. Concealing their original physical associations, the artist manipulates the recycled materials to render them as a renewed sense of play and strength.

About The Third Line
The Third Line is a Dubai based art gallery that represents contemporary Middle Eastern artists locally, regionally and internationally. 

Represented artists include: Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Arwa Abouon, Babak Golkar, Farah Al Qasimi, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Golnaz Fathi, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Laleh Khorramian, Lamya Gargash, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Sahand Hesamiyan, Sara Naim, Sherin Guirguis, Shirin Aliabadi, Slavs and Tatars, Sophia Al-Maria, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Youssef Nabil and Zineb Sedira.

For press enquiries, contact press [​at​] thethirdline.com.