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News: Announcing representation of Sara Alahbabi and Aisha Alhammadi.
Press Information October, 2025
AWL Gallery Announcing Representation of Emirati Artists
Sara Alahbabi and Aisha Alhammadi join AWL Gallery
AWL Gallery has the pleasure of announcing the representation of two Emirati artists, Sara Alahbabi and Aisha Alhammadi, ahead of its participation in Abu Dhabi Art Fair in November 2025. With Alahbabi and Alhammadi joining its roster, the gallery is confirming its commitment to the Emirati art scene and to providing a stage for Emirati artists in the global art world. Headquartered in Girona, Spain, AWL is a contemporary art gallery that is expanding its presence to Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles under the direction of Pepe Baena Diví. Amongst its artists are Enric Ansesa, Annalee Davis and Agnes Questionmark.
“Participating in Abu Dhabi Art and fostering dialogue between Emirati and Spanish artists is a profound honour, bringing together my roots in Córdoba and my commitment to supporting emerging voices.”
— Pepe Baena Diví, Co-founder and Director, AWL Gallery
"True cultural exchange begins when international galleries engage deeply with Emirati artists and the UAE’s creative landscape. Abu Dhabi Art offers the perfect space for these connections to grow — I’m proud to be facilitating some of that dialogue across borders."
— Lateefa Bin Hamoodah, Cultural Strategist
Sara Alahbabi is a conceptual artist whose practice reimagines the architectures of everyday life as poetic encounters. She works across sculpture, installation, photography, and sound, using urban forms as starting points to reflect on visibility, access, and belonging. Alahbabs early work combined walking, mapping, and photographic documentation to trace the subtleties of Abu Dhabi’s urban environments — observing how nocturnal rhythms, informal architectures, and ambient light construct experiences of presence and invisibility. These projects laid the foundation for a practice deeply rooted in embodied research and sensitivity to detail. Over time, Alahbabi expanded this vocabulary into sculptural and material investigations that foreground thresholds, windows, and transitional spaces as metaphors for movement between interior and exterior, presence and absence.
In her current sculpture series, Wind’s Eye: Characters Archive, Alahbabi develops this language further, presenting works that stand both as autonomous objects and as collective arrangements. Matte finishes and vibrant colors disrupt the neutrality of concrete and minimalism, reframing them through playfulness, humor, and humanization. These works explore how abstraction can function as character rather than austerity, inviting audiences to engage with architecture not as static structure but as animated presence.
Aisha Alhammadi's work explores geometry, memory, and material transformation. Working primarily with marble, she creates sculptural works that reflect on silence, repetition, and the spiritual dimensions of form. Her early interest in Islamic geometric systems introduced her to ideas of symmetry and sacred order. Over time, her focus has shifted toward geometry as a more open and evolving language. Rather than using it as decoration, she treats it as a means of inquiry. Her forms are shaped through acts of carving and reduction, where absence becomes a central part of what is being communicated.
Alhammadi’s practice draws on the rhythms of her environment. Architectural forms, domestic spaces, and spatial memories influence the textures and structures that emerge in her work. Through careful attention to material and time, she creates sculptural environments that offer space for contemplation.
Press images.
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Sara Alahbabi, Wind’s Eye: Characters Archive عين الريح: أرشيف الوجوه, 2025. Mixed media sculpture, 45 x 54 x 14 cm, SA25003. All rights reserved by the artist. Photo: Ismail Noor at Seeing Things.
Sara Alahbabi, Wind’s Eye: Characters Archive عين الريح: أرشيف الوجوه, 2025 Mixed media sculpture, 60 x 15 x 15 cm, SA25005. All rights reserved by the artist. Photo: Ismail Noor at Seeing Things
.Sara Dhafer Alahbabi portrait and works. Photo credit: Kristina Sergeeva of Seeing Things.
Sara Alahbabi, Wind’s Eye: Characters Archive عين الريح: أرشيف الوجوه, 2025. Mixed media sculpture, 50 x 21 x14 cm, SA25003. All rights reserved by the artist. Photo: Ismail Noor at Seeing Things.
Sara Dhafer Alahbabi portrait. Photo credit: Kristina Sergeeva of Seeing Things.
Biography – Sara Alahbabi
Sara Dhafer Alahbabi (b. 1990s) is an Emirati conceptual artist whose practice reimagines the architectures of everyday life as poetic encounters. She works across sculpture, installation, photography, and sound, using urban forms as starting points to reflect on visibility, access, and belonging.
Alahbabi holds an MFA in Art and Media (2024) and a BA in Visual Arts and Political Science (2016) from New York University Abu Dhabi. Alongside her practice, she serves as a Senior Interpretation Specialist at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, working in education, interpretation, and public engagement. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions including Wrapped Around Me (NYUAD, 2014), Here’s What They Think of Me (NYUAD, 2016), Portrait of a Nation (me Collectors Room, Berlin, 2017), Community & Critique (Warehouse421, 2017), It Comes in Many Forms (RISD Museum, 2020–2021), Bound (Bayt Al Mamzar, 2023), Learning to Unlearn (NYUAD, 2023), and Time Line Electricals: On A Timeline (421 Arts Campus, 2024).
Sara Dhafer Alahbabi portrait. Photo credit: Kristina Sergeeva of Seeing Things.
Sara Alahbabi, Wind’s Eye: Characters Archive عين الريح: أرشيف الوجوه, 2025. Mixed media sculpture, 50 x 21 x14 cm, SA25003. All rights reserved by the artist. Photo: Ismail Noor at Seeing Things
“As an Emirati artist, being represented globally means inviting the world to engage with our unique narratives.
It’s a chance to let our creative vision spark meaningful conversations across cultures.”— Sara Alahbabi
Aisha Alhammadi, Re-emergence, 2024. Graphite on paper, 213 x 97 cm, AA24003. Photo: Ismail Noor, Seeing Things.
Aisha Alhammadi, Duality, 2025. Marble, embroidery. Marble: 50 x 50 cm. Embroidery: 300 x 50 cm. AA25001 All rights reserved by the artist. Photo: Aisha Alhammadi
Aisha Alhammadi at work. Photo credit: Kristina Sergeeva of Seeing Things.
Aisha Alhammadi portrait. Photo credit: Kristina Sergeeva of Seeing Things.
Aisha Alhammadi portrait. Photo credit: Kristina Sergeeva of Seeing Things.
Biography – Aisha Alhammadi
Aisha Alhammadi (b. 2000, Abu Dhabi) is an Emirati artist whose work explores geometry, memory, and material transformation. Working primarily with marble, she creates sculptural works that reflect on silence, repetition, and the spiritual dimensions of form.
She holds a BA in Art and Art History from NYU Abu Dhabi, with a minor in Film and New Media. Her capstone thesis, Transcending Symmetry (2024), investigated the breakdown of geometric form as a way of exploring rhythm, entropy, and spiritual presence.
Her work has been exhibited at the Abrahamic Family House (The Art That Keeps on Giving, 2025), Al Safa Art and Design Library (Narratives of Belonging, 2024), Al Shindagha Historic District (The House on a Two-way Street, 2025), and The Cube at NYU Abu Dhabi (Freej, 2022). She interned with the UAE National Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), contributed to light-based public commissions with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, and is a recipient of the UAE Ministry of Culture’s National Grant Program for Culture and Creativity.
“It’s a proud moment for me to represent the UAE on a global stage and share my culture through art.”
— Aisha Alhammadi
Aisha Alhammadi, Duality, 2025. Marble, embroidery. Marble: 50 x 50 cm. Embroidery: 300 x 50 cm. AA25001. All rights reserved by the artist. Photo: Ismail Noor, Seeing Things.
Media contact:
Sofia Bertilsson
Art Insider PR
sofia@artinsiderpr.com
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About AWL Galery
Founded in 2024, AWL is headquartered in Girona, with an expanding presence in Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles. The gallery represents emerging and established voices whose transdisciplinary practices explore socio-cultural dynamics, the human experience, and the complexities of diaspora. AWL places strong emphasis on discourse that challenges conceptual boundaries while fostering cross-cultural dialogue across diverse artistic traditions and audiences. With a curatorial approach rooted in social awareness, AWL engages with the global art community through transnational collaboration and experimental initiatives.
Girona, Spain
c/ Sta Eugènia 5, pral 1a
17001 Girona
info@awl.gallery
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Los Angeles, USA
