Archipelago of Whispers

Archipelago of Whispers is a group exhibition of seven artists at 421 Arts Campus in Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, from 4 October 2026 to 10 January 2027. It is curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr.

Through video, multi-channel and sound installations and performative and participatory work, the exhibition looks at what 421 calls "alternative infrastructures for knowledge-making such as whispers, murmurs, hums, gossip, and storytelling". Farah Al Qasimi's video Everybody was Invited to a Party (2018) draws on the 1980s Arabic-language version of Sesame Street. Ayman Zedani's sonic installation Between Desert Seas (2021) shares recordings of Arabian Sea humpback whales. Omar Mismar shows Root and Branch (2026) and Suspending belief, Suspending disbelief (2017/2026), which range, in 421's words, "from suppressed slogans resurfacing through layers of paint to a hammock suspended between acts of hearing and saying." Gizem Karakaş's Guilty Pleasures IV (2018) disperses whispered voices through the space, and Ruba Al-Sweel's FIRST PHONE (2024) is an AI-narrated video-essay. Aliaskar Abarkas's site-responsive performance Between the Shelves (2026) turns fragments from the 421 Reading Room into a collective vocal score. Yen Chun Lin shows Amorphous Vessels: Undertide and Amorphous Vessels: Ground Current (both 2026), on interspecies communication.

Farah Al Qasimi is a US-based Emirati artist whose photographic and video work was the subject of General Behaviour at the Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi. Ayman Zedani won the inaugural Ithra Art Prize in 2018 and took part in the 16th Sharjah Biennial and the 18th Istanbul Biennial in 2025. Aliaskar Abarkas is an Iranian artist based in London and an associate artist at Sadler's Wells / Rose Choreographic School for 2024 to 2026.

Deniz Kirkali is an independent curator and writer based between Istanbul and London, and a co-founder of the collective topsoil and of Garp Sessions, a summer residency in Babakale, Turkey. Elham Puriya Mehr is an artist, curator and scholar based in Vancouver and co-director of Empty Space Studio. The two met through the Advanced Practices Lab at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The exhibition opens alongside Juma Alhaj: Revelation, the artist's first institutional solo exhibition, on the same campus.