What We Carry Becomes the Terrain

What We Carry Becomes the Terrain is a solo exhibition by Bénédicte Gimonnet at Aisha Alabbar Gallery in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, from 23 September to 7 November 2026.

The exhibition brings together paintings, screen prints, drawings and textile works. It follows a journey back to Peru which, the gallery writes, marks "a renewed engagement with the places and historical roots that have long informed her practice." Windows, façades and thresholds appear within dense vegetation. The textile works combine fabrics sourced from Peru, France and the UAE with Talli, the metallic thread embroidery traditional to the Emirates, as in Grand Echo Rouge (2026).

The exhibition also introduces the Gran Eco series, Spanish for Grand Echo. These tall vertical drawings and canvases show personal sites, architecture intertwined with vegetation, in Peru, France, the UAE and the United Kingdom, the places where she has lived longest. Ink drawings with graphite annotations marking time and duration accompany them. In the gallery's words, the works "treat landscape as something carried as much as inhabited."

Gimonnet was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, in 1969 and works in the UAE. Her paintings of rainforest environments follow her reconciliation with her Peruvian roots, with colour that references Peruvian folklore rather than observed nature. Her solo exhibition Echoes of Eden was held at the Municipal and Cultural Palace, Peru, in 2025. Her work is in the collection of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Lima.

Aisha Alabbar Gallery previously presented her solo exhibition In Search of Eden, from 11 January to 18 February 2023.