Traces of Home

Traces of Home is a two-person exhibition of work by Salmah Almansoori and Marilina Marchica. Almansoori is an Emirati artist born in Ghayathi in 2001; Marchica is an Italian artist born in Agrigento in 1984. Curated by Mara Firetti of Firetti Contemporary, it is shown at the Italian Cultural Institute in Abu Dhabi, in the Al Bateen district, from 17 November to 1 December 2026. Painting, drawing, frottage, casting and installation all appear in the show. Almansoori paints in watercolour on paper she makes from palm fibre, and also uses spices and found objects. Marchica works from walls and weathered surfaces through frottage, drawing and casting, with silicone, pigment and period wallpaper.

Firetti Contemporary presents the pairing as an encounter between Sicily and Ghayathi, a town in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi. In the gallery's account, both artists look at how memory, identity and belonging attach to a place. Their methods run in opposite directions: Marchica works by subtraction and fragmentation, Almansoori by accumulation and reconstruction. The title does not define home, which here might mean a building, a stretch of land, a material or something remembered.

Almansoori's starting point is Ghayathi, where she was born and raised. She looks at its buildings as they are altered or left empty, and at household objects and remembered landscapes; the gallery's phrase for these is "places in transition". The gallery publishes Tracing What Remains 03 and 04 (2025), two watercolours on palm handmade paper, each 120 x 230 cm. It also lists Witnessing the Fragments (2026), in watercolour and spices on handmade cotton paper. Marchica's material comes from Sicily, from its old walls, ruins and broken pieces of buildings. The gallery describes her approach as reduction: she leaves what is lost alone and records the marks, cracks, imprints and residues that survive. Her published works include Fragment/Family Home (2023), a silicone cast with period wallpaper, and Fragment (2026), in pigment on pouncing paper.

The gallery also links the show to Almansoori's earlier work in Italy. In 2024 she held the solo exhibition Memories Are Home at Cala Del Forte in Ventimiglia, from 31 August to 26 September. It was organised by FIDAPA Porta d'Italia and Orizzonti ARTEK. She graduated from Zayed University in 2023, and in 2026 held the solo exhibition Who I Become at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah.