Emirati sculptor Shaikha Al Mazrou unveils Two Horizons at Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation

Emirati artist Shaikha Al Mazrou is showing Two Horizons, a solo exhibition that combines existing sculptures with new commissions, at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, where it runs with free entry until 18 July 2027, according to the venue and reports in Gulf News and The National.

An atrium turned into a sculptural landscape

The exhibition is curated by Reem Fadda, director of culture programming at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, with co-curators Noor AlMehairbi and Paz Monge and assistant curator Afra Saif Almazrouei. It unfolds in four chapters across the building’s atrium and inner galleries and took about a year to prepare, The National reported.

Al Mazrou, an assistant professor of arts practice at New York University Abu Dhabi, is known for working with steel, marble, glass, resin and copper. The Cultural Foundation describes the show as an exploration of “materiality, gravity and spatial tension”.

Marble that seems to ripple

At the centre of the atrium stands A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance, a work in black jade marble that, seen from above, resembles two ripples on water. Al Mazrou first made it for the Aichi Triennale in Japan, after noticing a dried-up fountain in a courtyard in Nagoya. Its title comes from the poem by Stéphane Mallarmé she was reading at the time.

The stone was cut with water jets and computer-controlled machines, then polished by hand. “I always claim that I’m not a poet, and this is not a poem,” the artist told Gulf News. “My work doesn’t necessarily reflect poetry, but it’s heavily influenced by poetry.”

Horizons, sky and the colour of water

The title reflects her long fascination with the horizon, which she often studies from aircraft windows. “I find myself constantly questioning the distance to the horizon,” she told The National. A new commission, Fragmented Horizons, uses oxidised steel poles to trace an artificial horizon through the building’s architecture.

Another piece, Water Was Never Blue, draws on the cyanometer, an 18th-century instrument for measuring the blueness of the sky, and questions the habit of calling water blue when it is clear. A blue work marked with numbers, Despite the Weather, alludes to coordinates and phone numbers, which the artist describes as a statement that things will happen again, despite the weather.

Steel folded like paper

The final chapter, In Geometry of a Fold, gathers coated steel sculptures that look like oversized sheets of crumpled paper or fabric. Al Mazrou explained the difference between the two materials: paper can be unfolded back to its original size, but “with metal, it does not obey you. You can fold it, and it holds its shape.”

A career built in public spaces

Her monumental work has travelled widely in recent years. Red Stack, a towering sculpture resembling a pile of cushions, appeared at Frieze Sculpture in London’s Regent’s Park in 2022, and in 2025 she installed Deliberate Pauses, a series of large red metal circles along a trail above Hatta’s Leem Lake.

A graduate of the University of Sharjah, she told The National that the UAE’s artistic history predates its recent museum boom, even if artists long lacked dedicated spaces. The Cultural Foundation, which opened in 1981 beside Qasr Al Hosn, has been a fixture of the capital’s cultural life ever since; from 11 December it will also host Emirati Film Month with Image Nation.

“This show is not defining my practice,” Al Mazrou said. “This show is a negotiation space of what you see and what you carry.”