Spectrum Exhibition

“SPECTRUM”

Photographers in Residence Program Exhibition 4th COHORT 2026

Becoming Visible: Becoming Image

Becoming does not arrive all at once. It unfolds gradually, announced through faint traces, through light, through time, and through what lingers after a moment has passed. From this space emerge the works of the fourth cohort of Spectrum Photography's Residency Programme, born of a shared journey of research, making, and critical exchange.

These works approach photography not as a means of capturing the world, but as a space in which our relationship to it is continually reconfigured. The image does not settle into what it reveals; instead, it remains open to being seen again, as trace, as rhythm, as something still in the process of transformation.

Stars, pearls, the Ghaf tree, the body's imprint, and the rhythms of everyday life appear here not as subjects of representation, but as elements moving within the image itself. Place carries its own layers, time leaves its mark, and light shifts from a medium of vision to a medium of thought.

The works exist alongside one another without seeking a single voice. Each follows its own rhythm, while the spaces between them give rise to new relationships: between proximity and distance, between what is visible and what escapes, and between what endures and what passes.

Becoming Image is not a description of a moment but of an ongoing condition. An image is never complete at the instant it is made; it continues to unfold with every encounter, every reading, and every passing of time.

Participating Artists:
Yijing Li (Bao)
Dhabia AlMansoori
Faisal Al Marzooqi
Ghanem Alameri
Khadija Hamid
Mahra Al Sheryani
Mariia Pertseva
Nadia Alnuaimi
Sultana Alameeri
Viktoryia Vinnikava

Photography Expert and Program Mentor:
Jassem Rabee Al Awadi

About the Artists and Their Projects

Bao Li
b. 2000, China

Bao is an Abu Dhabi-based artist working across print, installation, and performance, with a focus on image-making. Her practice explores the interplay between game mechanics and storytelling, inviting audiences to engage as active participants.

等果子熟了回来
Come Back When the Trees Bear Fruit
2026
Mixed media installation, Size variable

My practice begins with images. I am interested in what happens when an image no longer stays flat. I look at how images can become encounters or spaces to allow interaction to happen.

For a long time, the fruit apple was an anchor in my work. I repeated the observation until it felt exhausted. I used it to test how much one object could hold. Eventually, I needed to move beyond using the apple as a symbol. I began to question what kind of personal connection I had formed with it. This question led me back to my hometown, a place I had not properly returned to in years.

There, I realized how little I actually knew about where I came from. My parents had always carried the labor of belonging for me. Returning felt unfamiliar. I had to ask questions, arrange encounters, and rely on others to guide me through a place that was supposed to be mine.

We planted an apple tree there. When it was time to leave, Auntie Wang, a woman I have known since childhood, came to us and said, "Come back when the trees bear fruit." She told us she would look after it.

Over the past few months, I have found myself on an unexpected journey back. I stayed long enough to sit with what had always been around me, but had never fully reached me when I was younger. At the same time, trees kept appearing wherever I went: the palm tree outside my window in Abu Dhabi, the apple tree where this exploration began, and the ancient tree in my hometown, recorded as the starting point of generations of migration. Each of these moments carried quiet reminders of commitment, of bearing fruit, and of returning.

This work brings these moments together. Taking the form of an immersive installation, it reflects on what has always been there, and what might continue to remain.

Dhabia Khalid AlMansoori
b. 2000, United Arab Emirates

Dhabia AlMansoori is an Emirati multidisciplinary creative working across interactive installations, augmented reality, and digital storytelling. Blending technology with collective memory, her practice reimagines traditional narratives through contemporary media.

With This Fruit, I Will Build a Kingdom
2026
Mixed media installation (Digital print, Wood blocks, Video)

"With This Fruit, I Will Build a Kingdom" is a photographic series following Mohamed, a ten-year-old boy, as he navigates the world of fruit.

Before this project, Mohamed was dissuaded from using knives, told that food is not to be played with. One Sunday, all this changes: he finds himself in front of a canvas made up of knives and fruit, with an unlimited ability to explore, break, and build. Shot over several months, this series features three distinct settings: the fruit market, the studio, and the dining room.

The photographs are displayed in chronological order inside a tower of wooden blocks, so the work is built the way a child builds and learns by stacking, in play.

Faisal Al Marzooqi
b. 1991, United Arab Emirates

Faisal Al Marzooqi is an Emirati photographer who works primarily with analog photography, adopting an observational approach to urban life. His practice blends street photography with a documentary style, capturing overlooked moments and hidden narratives within the city.

Echo Chambers
2026
Musicians' Portraits, Analog photographic prints, Analog photography, film developing, and printing equipment

Sound begins as an internal reverberation, a private frequency that pulls at a person until it is forced into the physical world. This project is a search for the origin of that pull. Through high-contrast portraiture and quiet dialogue, Echo Chambers strips back the performance to find the person. The process begins with a question: Why? What follows is a collaborative investigation into the impulse to create, capturing the space where a musician's history meets their current resonance. What remains is a dialogue of perspective:

The Process: The raw contact sheet, a rhythmic, unfiltered documentation of the search. It is the photographer's perspective, capturing the movement, the tension, and the kinetic reality of the roll.

The Persona: The final, enlarged print, the moment chosen by the musician. It is their definitive note, the image where their internal intent meets the world's eye.

In these frames, the grain and the blur act as the visual equivalent of feedback. Echo Chambers is not a study of music, but an investigation into the silence that precedes it, and the personal echoes that remain long after the note has faded.

Khadija Hamid
b. 1998, United Arab Emirates

Where We Bloom Unseen
2026
Photography, textile-based mixed media, and sculptural installation, Size variable

Flowers have become the foundation of my artistic practice. Rather than approaching them as botanical subjects, I see them as a visual language through which I explore identity, memory, emotion, and the human experience. They carry contradictions that continue to fascinate me: strength and fragility, permanence and impermanence, silence and expression.

My practice is intentionally open-ended. I move between photography, installation, painting, moving image, and material experimentation, allowing each body of work to determine its own form while remaining connected through a shared investigation of flowers as both subject and metaphor. I am interested in creating experiences that encourage viewers to slow down, reflect, and form their own emotional relationship with the work.

Identity is an ongoing photographic and installation-based body of work that explores the relationship between identity, memory, and presence through the symbolic language of flowers. Rather than functioning as decorative elements, flowers become portraits, standing in place of the human face and shifting attention away from physical recognition towards emotion, vulnerability, and the unseen aspects of the self. By concealing identity, the work invites viewers to reconsider how we perceive one another beyond appearance, allowing space for personal interpretation and reflection.

The exhibition extends the photographic image into physical space through installation, creating an immersive environment where visitors move among the works rather than simply observe them. A transparent floral sculpture with a reflective centre becomes a final point of encounter, encouraging each visitor to see themselves within the work and, in doing so, become part of its narrative.

As one chapter within my broader artistic practice, Identity reflects my continuing interest in using flowers as a visual language through which questions of belonging, transformation, and human experience can be explored. Rather than offering fixed answers, the project creates a quiet space for contemplation, where meaning emerges through the relationship between the artwork, the environment, and the viewer.

Mahra Al Sheryani
b. 2005, United Arab Emirates

Mahra Al Sheryani is a photographer, whose practice spans travel, aviation, wildlife, and astrophotography. With a focus on natural light and authentic moments, she captures intricate details while continuously evolving her visual style.

Thuraya: Constellations of Inheritance
2026
Mixed media installation (Digital print, traditional Emirati Burqa's)

I photograph things that make me stop and look. Whether it's a distant galaxy, microscopic forms cultivated through touch, an unusual texture, or an unexpected colour, I am drawn to things that feel beautiful, strange, or easy to overlook.

For me, photography is a way of documenting and paying attention. It allows me to slow down and spend time with things that spark my curiosity and to share that sense of wonder with others. I work across different forms of photography, from astrophotography and landscapes to documentary and experimental image-making, allowing each subject to shape the way I approach it.

I am particularly interested in the relationship between seeing and discovery, and in how photography can reveal details and experiences that might otherwise go unnoticed. Moving between the microscopic and the cosmic, my work explores the ways images can transform our understanding of scale, intimacy, and the world around us.

Ultimately, my practice is driven by curiosity. Through my images, I hope to create moments of pause and encourage others to experience the same feelings of awe, beauty, and fascination that first led me to pick up a camera.

A constellation is formed by connecting separate points of light into meaningful patterns. In the same way, inheritance is not a complete narrative passed intact from one generation to the next, but a constellation of memories, gestures, and ways of seeing that continue to gather meaning over time.

Thuraya: Constellations of Inheritance takes its name from the Pleiades star cluster, known in Arabic as Thuraya, whose appearance in the sky once guided movement, marked seasonal change, and shaped everyday life across the Emirates. Through systems such as the Durour calendar, the stars became a means of understanding time itself, connecting celestial movements to agriculture, travel, pearl diving, and the rhythms of everyday life.

This project considers the night sky as a living archive and asks how forms of knowledge survive through inheritance. It is particularly interested in the quieter histories that exist beyond official records, including the experiences of Emirati women who lived beneath these same constellations and whose lives were equally shaped by seasonal cycles and the passing of time.

The Emirati Burqa's enters the work as both a trace of presence and a vessel of inheritance. Rather than functioning as a symbol of identity, it gestures toward the generations of women who lived beneath these same constellations and whose lives were equally shaped by seasonal rhythms and celestial cycles. Like the Durour calendar and other forms of inherited knowledge, the Burqa's carries memory across time, suggesting that cultural understanding is often preserved through everyday objects, practices, and ways of seeing.

Rather than presenting heritage as something fixed or lost, Thuraya understands inheritance as an active process of remembering and reassembling. Like starlight that continues to travel long after leaving its source, cultural memory persists through traces that remain present even as their origins recede from view.

Ultimately, the work proposes the night sky as a shared inheritance: a constellation of knowledge, memory, and presence that continues to orient our understanding of the world and our place within it.

Maria Pertseva
b. 1995, Russia

Mariia Pertseva is a visual artist and photographer based in Abu Dhabi, using photography and mixed media to explore life transitions through folklore and symbolic imagery. Her work plays with light, reflections, and optical effects to express delicate states of being.

What the Depth Holds
2026
Mixed media, and sculptural installation

The foundation of my artistic practice is the study of states of transition and transformation. Its origin lies in folklore studies: archetypal motifs serve as a coordinate system through which I describe contemporary personal experience and translate it into visual narratives. In a world where familiar structures are in constant flux, the state of transition becomes one of the key human experiences; it is important to me to register and articulate it through a visual language.

The key motif of my practice is light. Rooted in photography, it is for me a metaphor of inner resource and a form of love for life. After a profound loss, I spent a long time in a state of inner darkness. And when the wounds began to heal, I noticed the light around me, to value and protect it. Now it has become the material from which images are born, and something that can heal. I work primarily with natural and reflected light, treating it not only as an image-making material but also as a symbol of love for the world.

It is important for me to create a space in which the viewer recognizes their own moments of strength and pause, sensing that fragility can coexist with steadiness and that instability can coexist with growth. Through light, soft-focus optics (a monocle lens), and folkloric motifs, I construct a field of quiet empathy where one can see a reflection of one's own states and experience a moment of inner recognition.

The project asks what happens to the memories we try to erase. Do they disappear, or return in another form: as dream fragments, background turbulence, or pearls of lived experience? At the center of the project is the image of a diver for memories. She dives into sleep as into the sea, moving through images, fears, sensations, and fragments of the past that the mind tries to push away. Some memories nevertheless continue to seep through dreams, returning in altered and symbolic forms. The pearl becomes a metaphor for acceptance and transformation: an experience that may have been difficult, unwanted, or hidden, but eventually becomes part of one's inner material. In this sense, each pearl is not only a wound, but also a trace of survival, change, and personal value. This image also connects the project with the UAE and its pearl-diving heritage. The installation combines translucent fabric, photographic fragments, fishing net, pearls, and underwater projection.

Nadia Alnuaimi
United Arab Emirates

Nadia Al Nuaimi is an Emirati photographer who blends artistic vision with visual storytelling. Her work focuses on macro photography of everyday life, landscapes, and portraits, using natural light to highlight details and create intimate, expressive images.

A Shade Like Salvation
2026
Mixed media installation (Video, Digital print)

My photographic practice is shaped by a sensitivity to detail, light, and the quiet moments within everyday life. I work across different styles, from documenting lived experiences to creating more conceptual and reflective imagery, allowing my work to move between observation and interpretation.

I am particularly drawn to small details and ordinary moments, those that are often overlooked yet hold a certain emotional weight. Through light, composition, and stillness, I aim to transform these moments into images that feel calm, intimate, and quietly powerful. My work moves fluidly between natural elements, human presence, and everyday environments. I approach each scene not simply as documentation, but as an opportunity to capture an atmosphere, something that resonates beyond what is immediately seen. In this project, I explore the relationship between softness and harshness, using natural elements to reflect a deeper emotional balance. I focus on how softness can exist within challenging environments, not as weakness, but as a quiet form of strength. Ultimately, my intention is to create images that connect on a human level, work that feel familiar, yet leaves a lasting emotional impression.

Sultana Alameeri
b. 2003, United Arab Emirates

Sultana Alameeri is a visual artist exploring nostalgia, memory, and the evolving relationship between physical and digital spaces. Working across drawing, photography, and mixed media, she reflects on how objects and internet culture shape identity in a rapidly changing world.

I Wanted It to Be Something
2026
Mixed media installation, Painting and Video projection

What is performance? What is the self? And where do we draw the line between who we are and who we perform?

This project looks at the versions of ourselves that emerge when observed. In front of the camera, the self-shifts. The work moves through different modes of performance, from the stage, to cinema, to the everyday roles we take on with our boss, our friends, ourselves.

Through abstracted photography, the piece captures these performances. When faced with a camera, how do we choose to present ourselves? How do we perform? Which version of the self-do we present?

We switch between these versions constantly. We perform without thinking, and sometimes we perform deliberately. Over time, it becomes unclear what the "true self" is, or if there is anything separate at all. This work is about sitting with that tension, performing for the camera, and performing for yourself, until the difference starts to blur.

Viktoryia Vinnikava
b. 1979, Belarus

Viktoryia Vinnikava is a self-taught photographer based in Abu Dhabi. Fascinated by light and the subtle shifts in everyday environments, her work explores how time, shadows, and color transform familiar spaces.

Elusive Reality of Time
2022 - 2026
Photography installation with layered, fine art prints and text, various dimensions

For many years I have been interested in a simple question: how can time be seen?

Rather than looking for answers in clocks or calendars, I found them in light. Light is constantly changing, transforming familiar spaces throughout the day and creating moments that exist only briefly before disappearing. These temporary alignments became the foundation of Elusive Reality of Time.

Working within the urban landscape of Abu Dhabi, I photograph architectural details, shadows, reflections, and geometric forms. By carefully positioning myself and using a telephoto lens to compress distance, I discover moments when separate elements appear connected, creating visual relationships that do not exist from any other viewpoint. What seems solid and permanent becomes uncertain, inviting viewers to question what they are really seeing.

Each photograph serves as a record of a precise, unrepeatable alignment of light, space, and perception, gradually forming a visual map of time experienced through change. For me, photography is not about capturing reality but about noticing how briefly it reveals itself.

The installation expands this experience beyond the photographic image. Works are created from separate photographs displayed at slightly different depths. As viewers move around them, the images gradually reveal changing relationships between lines, forms, and architectural details. From certain viewpoints, these elements align more precisely, turning the act of looking into a process of discovery.

Each work also carries the exact date and time when the original photographs were taken. In some pairs, the two images are separated by minutes; in others, by days, months, or years. These time distances become part of the work, revealing that the alignment is not only spatial, but also temporal.

In the triptych, three moments meet within one visual structure, expanding the idea from a pair into a larger field of connection. Across the installation, time is both measured and felt as data, as memory, and as a fragile relationship between images.

At its core, Elusive Reality of Time is an invitation to slow down and observe. It asks whether reality is fixed, or whether it changes depending on how, where, and for how long we choose to look.

Ghanem Alameri
United Arab Emirates

Ghanem Alameri is a photographer, whose work explores the dialogue between architecture and urban life. Through light, structure, and movement, he captures the quiet coexistence between human presence and the evolving cityscape.