Karima Shomely: Between a Fold and a Memory

Karima Shomely: Between a Fold and a Memory is a solo exhibition by the Emirati artist Karima Al Shomely at Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai. It runs from 23 September to 10 November 2026 at I-87, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. The show brings together twenty works: nine photographic prints, three large prints on aluminium and eight aluminium sculptures. The works draw on the burqa, a face mask once widely worn by Emirati women, and on the printed fabrics of traditional dress.

The sculptures are upright or folded aluminium forms on low plinths, their surfaces covered in the patterns of printed dress fabrics. The largest, Bu Tayla, measures 137 x 120 x 40 cm; Bu Tarah and Bu kazowah measure 130 x 70 x 35 cm and 120 x 70 x 35 cm. The patterns come from fabrics used to make jalabiyas and kanduras. Some of these cloths are disappearing from the market, the artist has said, and the sculptures keep a visual archive of them in heavy metal.

The photographs, each 70 x 47 cm, show a woman in a burqa and a long patterned dress, posed against a backdrop and props in the same cloth. Some set the burqa beside habits the grandmothers' generation did not have, such as holding an iPad, carrying a suitcase or going to the gym. The artist has said the message is for a new generation. Titles include Bu Harara, Sultani and Bu Tarah (2024). Three 2022 prints on aluminium, Bu Glaim, Bu Tayla and Bu Tarah, measure 200 x 130 cm. She describes her approach as presenting heritage "with a kind of modernity", and Emarat Al Youm read the show as treating heritage as changing rather than fixed.

Al Shomely was born in Sharjah, where she lives and teaches as an assistant professor in the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Sharjah. In 2016 she completed a doctorate at Kingston University, London, with the thesis "An intimate object: a practice-based study of the Emirati Burqa". She has said she spent more than five years researching the burqa and interviewed fifty-four women. The gallery names Islamic geometry and the heritage imagery of Emirati women as the focus of her research. Earlier solo exhibitions include Emirati Burqa: An Intimate Object at Sharjah Heritage Museum, 2017 to 2018, and Sahhara: Hidden Adornments at Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, 2022 to 2023.