Abu Dhabi, UAE | Rizq Art Initiative, Reem Island | Until October 28, 2026
Much of everyday life unfolds through patterns we rarely stop to notice — familiar roads, objects kept close, changing cityscapes and small gestures repeated until they become almost instinctive.
These quiet rhythms take centre stage in Unseen Script, the latest group exhibition at Rizq Art Initiative on Reem Island, Abu Dhabi. Bringing together 10 artists from different backgrounds, the exhibition explores repetition, memory, nature and the ways people observe and interpret the world around them.
Curated by Meena Vari, the exhibition looks at the patterns embedded within each artist’s practice, asking what these recurring details can reveal about human experience. At a time when artificial intelligence increasingly identifies patterns in behaviour and uses them to anticipate what comes next, Unseen Script turns the focus back towards human observation and subjective memory.
Among the works is a monumental oil painting by Indian artist Abdulla P A, stretching more than 10 metres. His work considers the idea of home through both natural and man-made structures, reflecting on abandoned houses and the gradual return of nature to spaces left behind by migration and changing circumstances.
At a much smaller scale, Colombian-French artist Ana Escobar Saavedra transforms seashells and found materials into delicate assemblages, incorporating gold into fragments collected from beaches. Her work draws attention to objects that might otherwise deteriorate or disappear, giving new significance to what is fragile and overlooked.
The exhibition brings together a distinctly regional and international group of voices, including Emirati artists Najat Makki, Nujoom Alghanem and Nasir Nasrallah, Lebanese artist Fadi Balhawan, Palestinian artists Joanna Barakat and Neveen Abu Samra, Indian-born Simrin Mehra Agarwal, Syrian artist Ismail Al Rifai, as well as Abdulla P A and Ana Escobar Saavedra.
Their approaches vary considerably. Abu Samra combines painting with traditional Palestinian embroidery, while Balhawan brings language, calligraphy and abstraction together. Nasrallah draws inspiration from objects encountered in his grandfather’s former antique shop in Sharjah, transforming personal memories and imagined stories into works with the character of a visual diary.
Nature appears throughout the exhibition as another kind of storyteller. Mehra Agarwal examines decaying palm leaves, while other artists transform everyday or discarded materials into new forms. The works suggest that patterns do not belong only to human behaviour — nature, too, leaves its own traces and repetitions.
For Nujoom Alghanem, whose multidisciplinary practice extends beyond her better-known filmmaking into painting, ceramics, cement, resin and digital art, the relationship between the city and the natural world becomes central. Her paintings question how contemporary urban landscapes have transformed the way we experience our surroundings, with the city itself becoming a new kind of horizon.
Rather than offering a single interpretation, Unseen Script leaves space for each visitor to recognise their own patterns within the works. The exhibition becomes less about finding one answer and more about noticing what is already present in everyday life — the routines, memories, objects and environments that quietly shape how we see the world.
Unseen Script runs until October 28, 2026, at Rizq Art Initiative, Reem Island, Abu Dhabi.
