The Living Archive

Short Blurb: The Living Archive is a solo exhibition by Syrian artist Ahmad Tallaa bringing together large-scale portraits, sculptures, a tile installation, works on paper, and artist books in the most comprehensive presentation of his practice to date. Built from layers of sand collected in the UAE, chalk powder, pigments, and acrylic, Tallaa's surfaces are dense and almost sculptural; faces emerge from within the material as though excavated rather than painted. Anchored by the Adonis epigraph "I am not the one I am. I am the one I become," the exhibition proposes the face as a site of accumulated experience rather than fixed identity. The face here is neither victim nor survivor. It is a witness. Ahmad Tallaa (b. 1994, Damascus, Syria) lives and works in Sharjah, UAE.