Contemporary Myths from the Arabian Gulf

WHEN: 12 May–16 July 2023

WHERE: Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger, Switzerland

Exhibition Designer: Farah Alqedra

Evaporating Suns is an exhibition that looks at the breadth of inherited myths from the Arabian Gulf, their solidification over generations and their reintroduction into the contemporary realm. It unpacks the tensions and similarities set in the pendulum swing that lays between myth and fact. Fact becomes the framework that dissolves and demystifies. Myth plays a formative role in understanding the law of time and the changes marked through its passing in relation to place.  

The 11 artworks of Evaporating Suns branch into dimensions that point towards the local natural and built environments, social arrangements and structures, and perspective negotiations.

The local natural and built environment becomes the stage that elaborates on and borrows from the lived, day-to-day, tangible realities, giving context to the introduced imaginative realm. Social arrangements and structures follow the authority of the landscape that governs the society in its appropriate context.

The role of illusion is introduced as a tool for momentum, to explain the unexplainable and reach a goal that can only be arrived at through perspective negotiations. The dimensions introduced fall within the sway of fact and myth defined within the exhibition, recognizing society, people and stories as the only constant in the hybridity of falsities that become truths and truths that are deemed false.

The thirteen artists showcased in this exhibition are Maitha Abdalla, Mays Albaik, Fatema Al Fardan, Moza Almatrooshi, Abdullah Al Othman, Farah Al Qasimi, Mashael Alsaie, Zuhoor Al Sayegh, Asma Belhamar,  Alaa Edris, Saif Mhaisen, Fatima Uzdenova, and Bu Yousuf.