Artist's Room: Shezad Dawood

Artist's Room: Shezad Dawood is a solo presentation by the London-based artist at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. It runs from 20 September 2026 to 31 January 2027.

The room centres on New Dream Machine Project (2011), a three-metre-high rotating and flickering light sculpture. It is made of brushed steel, fluorescent lights and an electronic motor. It re-creates the Dreamachine of the artist and writer Brion Gysin, who conceived it around 1960 after years of living in Tangier. The centre writes: "To Dawood, the machine is both a formal proposition and a portal: a threshold object inducing states between waking and sleep, meditation and vision."

The sculpture was commissioned for the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2011 and is in the Art Jameel Collection. It was prototyped by craftsmen in Fes, Morocco, and engineered in Slough, England. It is shown with two Recyclages, smaller prototypes that Dawood assembled in Morocco from tin cans mounted on turntables from local markets. Archival images and research material in the lobby trace the project's history, including its presentation in 2011 at the Cinémathèque de Tanger.

Dawood was born in London in 1974. He trained at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art and completed a PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University. He lives and works in London. His practice spans painting, textiles, sculpture, film and digital media. Solo exhibitions and commissions listed by the artist include WIELS, Brussels, and the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, both in 2023.

Artists' Rooms is a series of solo exhibitions drawn largely from the Art Jameel Collection. Rooms by Lulua Alyahya and Walid Siti open at the centre on the same dates.