Winter 2025 program

421 Arts Campus, Abu Dhabi’s independent platform dedicated to supporting emerging creative practices, presents its winter 2025 program. Running from January 23 to March 21, this season features two major exhibitions and over 30 workshops and special events that focus on gentle and tactile activities that foster spaces of togetherness, restoration, and a collective sense of renewal. Opening on January 30 are the exhibitions Abdullah Al Saadi: Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia, an exhibition presenting over 40 years of the Emirati artist’s practice curated by Tarek Abou El-Fetouh; and Alla Abdunabi: Are your memories of me enough for you, a solo exhibition by artist who is part of the 2025 Artistic Development Program. 

A detailed schedule is outlined below.

Alla Abdunabi: Are your memories of me enough for you?
January 30 to May 4, 2025

Alla Abdunabi’s first solo exhibition presents a new body of work that critiques and engages with simulacra, a concept used in philosophy and cultural studies to analyze how symbols shape our perceptions of what is accepted as “real.” The work emphasizes the ways that iconography has been preserved and restored across different periods of history. By doing so, it raises crucial questions about how symbols not only endure but gain new significance as they are continually reintroduced into contemporary contexts. This restoration process, rather than simply reviving a historical moment or object, often reinforces the power structures embedded within them. Through the preservation of these icons in art, museums, or public spaces, Abdunabi investigates their influence and how they shape cultural and political narratives into the future. 

Central to the exhibition is the narrative of the Barbary lion, whose physical extinction and symbolic immortality serve as the perfect illustration of this phenomenon. Once native to North Africa, the Barbary lion was hunted into extinction by imperial powers, becoming a casualty of both ecological destruction and colonial assertion of dominance over nature. Yet, even in death, the Barbary lion lives on as a potent symbol of imperial power and grandeur. This immortalized lion functions as a form of iconography that transcends its biological existence, serving as a tool of imperial identity and myth-making.

Alla Abdunabi is participating in the 2025 cycle of the 421 Artistic Development Program, mentored by Jolaine Frizzell. The Artistic Development Program is an annual capacity-building program that gives early-career artists in the UAE the opportunity to develop a major body of work that culminates in a solo exhibition. 

Abdullah Al Saadi: Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia
Curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh
January 30 until May 4, 2025

The exhibition features eight works by Abdullah Al Saadi and offers a reflection on his decades-long artistic practice. It was initially presented at the National Pavilion UAE at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in May 2024. The exhibition is designed to bring the prolific artist’s work home to the UAE, giving the local arts community and the wider audiences across the country the opportunity to encounter Al Saadi’s practice more intimately. 

Artist Abdullah Al Saadi is a wanderer, chronicler, cartographer, poet, decipherer, alchemist, memory carrier, and storyteller. This exhibition includes works that were produced on his journeys in the wilderness, and invites viewers to explore his creative process in relation to the practices of Arab poets from centuries ago. During his journeys, Al Saadi begins to draw, paint, or write once he feels immersed in nature. Classical Arab poets described this immersion as the process leading up to the composition of their poems. He travels alone, with only the company of a book, music, domestic animals, or a means of transportation. The presence of these travel companions significantly impacts his artworks, as they join him in exploring the land and humankind’s place in it.

The exhibition is an invitation to enter Abdullah Al Saadi’s singular world and to wander among its unique and rich features. This is a journey where visitors move along a path, discovering both the displayed artworks and hidden art pieces in metal chests. In a re-enactment of the artist’s ritual with visitors in his studio, the concealed works are revealed by performers, who are constantly present in the space. They interact with visitors, telling them stories and giving them clues about the artist’s journeys and the collective memory that Al Saadi summons into the present, and meticulously preserves for the future.

This exhibition is accompanied by a number of interpretive tools that are designed to engage young audiences with contemporary art, including audio tours for adults and children, tactile books with poetry in Braille, family-friendly labels, and glossaries that offer a contextual reading of the exhibition materials. 

About the public program
The accompanying public program offers a range of events that center on making for the sake of making—on stitching, writing, walking, cooking, watching, and moving as a shared experience. Returning events like Jamming Sessions, Performance Co/Lab, the Khayal Series, and Pencil In anchor the season, alongside new artist-led workshops, community-led “Stitch-In” activations, regionally themed film screenings, and more. This winter, we pause on the feelings of collective exhaustion and lean towards experiences guided by curiosity, and the urge to create, all while embodying the spirit of 421, fostering a shared sense of community. 

This season, our public programming will feature 421 Creative Facilitators, a program developed in collaboration with the FIA Institute for Inclusion and Accessibility. This initiative offers People of Determination who are interested in careers in education or the arts valuable hands-on experience. Participants will have the opportunity to support instructors, artists, and the 421 team across various workshops and events.