The Bassam Freiha Art Foundation (BFAF) inaugurates its Autumn 2025 season with Nja Mahdaoui: The Choreographer of Letters a landmark retrospective dedicated to the Tunisian artist Nja Mahdaoui, a pioneering figure in modern Arab art whose work reimagines Arabic calligraphy as pure visual rhythm.
Spanning over sixty years of practice, the exhibition brings together nearly thirty works tracing Mahdaoui’s evolution from early explorations of form and gesture to his later, large-scale abstractions. Paintings on parchment, vellum, linen and metal are displayed alongside silkscreen prints and bronze sculptures, revealing the artist’s sustained dialogue between tradition and modernity.
Highlights include Concretion (1971), an early composition in lacquered oil where vibrant red, green, and blue currents collide with abstracted calligraphic forms, and Untitled 3 (2012) from the Azimuth series, in which sweeping diagonals and concentric shapes create a sense of movement across the vellum surface. Graphemes on Arches 2 (2011) captures Mahdaoui’s mastery of rhythm and balance through a meticulously constructed circular composition in ink.
Co-curated by Dr Michaela Watrelot, Director of Exhibitions at BFAF, and the artist’s daughter, Molka Mahdaoui, the exhibition offers a rare insight into the visual language that has defined Mahdaoui’s practice, one that transcends literal script to embrace the musicality of line and form.
Through this comprehensive survey, BFAF invites audiences to experience Mahdaoui’s world of visual poetry: a fusion of movement, geometry, and calligraphic abstraction that has shaped global perceptions of Arab modernism. The exhibition affirms Mahdaoui’s enduring legacy as an artist who, by dissolving the boundaries of text and image, continues to redefine the language of contemporary art.
Location: The Bassam Freiha Art Foundation, Main Gallery, Abu Dhabi.
Date: 24 October 2025 until 25 January 2026