Mays Albaik transforms the physical act of speaking into an exploration of language, memory, and identity.

What does a voice leave behind when the words themselves cannot be held? For Palestinian-Emirati artist Mays Albaik, language is not only something spoken or heard. It is something carried by the body, shaped by memory, and altered as it moves between people and places.

Her installation Be, so that I may be as I say! (2026), presented at the National Pavilion UAE’s exhibition Washwasha during the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, begins with two Arabic phrases: kun fayakūn, “Be, and it is,” and anā lughatī, “I am my language.” Through glass, light, and reflection, Albaik gives these words a physical presence.

The work began with casts made from the spaces inside her mouth as she formed the sounds of the two phrases. These impressions were transformed through a series of moulds and remakings before becoming hollow, blown-glass sculptures. Each stage altered the original form, raising a question at the heart of the work: how much of a sound remains when it passes through different materials and processes?

Ten transparent glass forms, derived from kun fayakūn, are suspended above the viewer and illuminated from within. Their surfaces catch and redirect light, creating shifting reflections that recall the movement of water. Below them, nine mirrored forms derived from anā lughatī rest on a dark base. Rather than simply reflecting the room, they bring the bodies and movements of visitors into the work itself.

From a distance, the installation can appear celestial, its illuminated forms resembling delicate objects suspended in space. Up close, the details become more intimate: the impressions of teeth, irregular cavities, the traces of the making process, and reflections that change with every movement around them.

The contrast between transparency and mirroring is central to the installation. One group of forms seems to release light into the surrounding space; the other returns the viewer’s image. Together, they explore two different ways of making language present without reducing it to words on a page or sounds in the air.

This approach connects with the wider concerns of Washwasha, an exhibition curated by Bana Kattan with assistant curator Tala Nassar. Taking its title from the Arabic word for whispering, the exhibition explores sound as a point of departure for thinking about oral histories, migration, technology, language, and identity.

Albaik’s practice often examines how the body negotiates place and language in contexts shaped by migration and displacement. Working across video, performance, text, and installation, she considers the ways memory and meaning shift through translation and lived experience.

Her relationship with the pavilion also carries a personal dimension. Albaik participated in the National Pavilion UAE’s Venice internship programme in 2016. Ten years later, she returned to Venice as one of the artists exhibiting within the pavilion.

In Be, so that I may be as I say!, language becomes something viewers encounter with their whole bodies. Glass preserves an impression but cannot retain the original voice; mirrors reflect the present but never offer the same image twice. Between what is spoken, what remains, and what is reflected, Albaik creates a space in which language is not simply heard. It is felt, seen, and continually remade.