How do our traces alter our environment and how is our environment altering us?

How can generating language influence our views and reading of place?

These are some of the provocations that artist Sarah Almehairi invites us to respond to in her upcoming workshop, ‘To Write a Walk, to Walk a Writing’, on Sunday, 15 October 2023 from 3PM-7PM at Alserkal Arts Foundation.

Through moments of reading, writing, and walking, Sarah prompts us to rework our understanding of everyday foundational elements - time, place, path, objects, signs, etc. - and formulate our own ways of mapping and moving through space.

The workshop ties into Sarah’s site-specific work ‘don’t overlook the weather (as your thoughts collect)’ - currently on view as part of The Follower, our public art commission project located within Alserkal Avenue’s outdoor public realm.

Note: Attendees will receive the complete itinerary for the session upon registration.

About the Artist

Sarah Almehairi (b. 1998, Abu Dhabi, UAE) lives and works in Abu Dhabi and holds a BA in Art and Art History from New York University Abu Dhabi. Almehairi's overarching body of work unfolds a discourse on themes of materiality, systems & interrelations, memory, and language through the intuitive and poetic examination of narrative and abstraction. By engaging with geometric forms, she extracts and defines a structural language read time and time again to suggest a form other than its own– a map, a sentence, a puzzle piece. Through the process, they are broken down, built, and reassembled as continuous iterations of themselves. These elements towards telling a story are not so explicit, lines and layers are used throughout her pieces as a means of exploring clarity and organization of collected information. Working primarily with investigative range of media, she explores the push and pull of material to evoke a story that both conceals and reveals itself.

She has participated in several group exhibitions, including Perceptible Rhythms/Alternative Temporalities, Middle East Institute, Washington DC (2022); Beyond: Emerging Artists, Abu Dhabi Art Commission (2022); Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives, ADMAF, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi (2022), Intimate Dimensions, Hafez Gallery, Jeddah (2020); The Youth Takeover, Jameel Arts Centre Dubai, (2019); and the 35th Annual Emirates Fine Art Society Exhibition, Sharjah Art Museum (2018). Her solo exhibitions include Between (2019) and When the Ground Was (2022), Carbon 12 Gallery, Dubai. Almehairi is also co-founder of JARA Collective, a chapbook press based in Abu Dhabi.