Contemporary art continues to be a space for reinterpreting symbols, traditions, and human experience. This article highlights exhibitions by Slavs and Tatars, Athar Jaber, Adrian Pepe, and artists at Leila Heller Gallery—Morteza Darehbaghi, Melis Buyruk, and Dale Chihuly. These artists draw from mythology, material history, and cultural heritage, transforming them into visual languages that engage with identity, resilience, and renewal.
Slavs and Tatars: Simurgh Self-Help
The Third Line – January 17 – March 6, 2025
The Third Line presents Simurgh Self-Help, Slavs and Tatars’ third solo exhibition at the gallery. Inspired by Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne – Département des Aigles (1968-1972), the collective reimagines the eagle—an emblem of nationalism—through the lens of Simurgh, a mythical bird rooted in Persianate and Turkic folklore.
In Gallery One, the exhibition explores Simurgh’s duality—both male and female, often depicted with a peacock’s body and a dog’s head. By juxtaposing Simurgh and the eagle, Slavs and Tatars speculate on national identity, expanding Broodthaers’ critique to include Central Asia and the Caucasus, regions historically caught between fading empires.
Gallery Two shifts focus to melons as repositories of knowledge in Central Asian culture. Writing appears in the texture of melon skins and within books, transforming melons into symbols of wisdom and storytelling.
Simurgh Self-Help marks the collective’s first major new body of work since Pickle Politics (2016-2023). Following its debut at The Third Line, the exhibition will travel to Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, and FRAC Pays de la Loire, France, in 2025.
Athar Jaber: Vestiges
Ayyam Gallery – 4 February – 1 April 2025
Ayyam Gallery presents Vestiges, a solo exhibition by Athar Jaber, marking his most extensive body of work to date. Through fractured and eroded sculptures, Jaber reimagines the human form, reflecting the physical and psychological toll of existence. His figures, marked by shattered limbs and contorted features, appear both fragile and resilient, caught between beauty and destruction.
Drawing inspiration from Francis Bacon’s psychological portraiture and Michelangelo’s Prisoners Series, Jaber’s work explores identity, loss, and transformation. His unconventional techniques—using shotguns and sandblasters—enhance the raw, visceral impact of his sculptures, evoking both violence and liberation.
Despite their fragmented state, Jaber’s sculptures are not symbols of defeat but expressions of survival. They stand as vestiges—remnants of something once whole, shaped by time and experience. His figures seem to emerge from, or dissolve into, the stone, suspended in a perpetual state of becoming.
Through Vestiges, Jaber invites us to contemplate impermanence, memory, and the traces we leave behind. His sculptures ask us to embrace the unfinished, recognising the beauty in what remains.
Adrian Pepe: A Shroud is a Cloth
NIKA Project Space in Dubai – January 29 – May 17, 2025
Opening on at NIKA Project Space, Dubai, A Shroud is a Cloth by Adrian Pepe explores memory, transformation, and resilience through textiles. At the heart of the exhibition is a 200-square-meter woolen textile that once wrapped a Beirut building damaged in the 2020 Port Explosion. This work embodies themes of repair and fragmentation, capturing traces of history within the material.
A Lebanon-based Honduran artist, Pepe’s practice bridges materials, ecology, and cultural landscapes. Wool, manipulated through felting, stitching, and layering, transforms into forms reminiscent of votives, maps, and effigies—gesturing toward the intangible. Debris extracted from the wool—dirt, seeds, and plant remnants—preserves the environment’s imprint.
Pepe’s artistic approach delves into the ancestral and ritualistic aspects of textiles, examining their historical significance in shaping cultural identities. His research-driven practice explores traditional craft techniques, material histories, and the intersection of labor and artistry. Through immersive installations and performative interventions, he reinterprets ancient methods to engage with contemporary environmental and social narratives.
Leila Heller Gallery: Three Exhibitions
Leila Heller Gallery presents three exhibitions showcasing a diverse array of artistic expression.
Morteza Darehbaghi: Timeless Blossoms
Morteza Darehbaghi’s Timeless Blossoms bridges tradition and modernity by reinterpreting classical Persian motifs such as Gol-o-Morgh and lacquer painting through a contemporary lens. His intricate works honour Persian artistic heritage while infusing it with a modern spirit, reflecting the evolving relationship between culture, nature, and creativity.
Melis Buyruk: Four Birds and One Soul
Melis Buyruk’s Four Birds and One Soul draws inspiration from Rumi’s Masnavi, transforming the symbolic tale of four birds—lust, greed, materialism, and pride—into porcelain sculptures. This introspective body of work reflects on human struggle and the possibility of transcendence.
Dale Chihuly: Selections From Four Decades of Iconic Work
Dale Chihuly’s Selections From Four Decades of Iconic Work highlights Chihuly’s four-decade career with over 50 glass sculptures, a large-scale installation, and dynamic two-dimensional works. From his famed Persians and Seaforms to monumental Towers, the exhibition celebrates his pioneering influence on contemporary glass art.
