VENICE: Six artists, spanning generations and geographies, have brought their work together into one of the most unified group presentations at the Arsenale this year. The UAE’s ninth appearance at La Biennale di Venezia unfolds under the title Washwasha, a collection running through November 22 that speaks through whispers about the intangible dimensions of human connection.
The exhibition takes its name from an onomatopoetic Arabic word whose meaning lives entirely in its sound. Tala Nassar, assistant curator and specialist in modern and contemporary Arab art, explained the conceptual foundation. “Sound optimizes a lot of our exhibition, but we are very strict about saying that this is not a sound show. The artists just use sound as a starting point to explore themes of the intangible,” she said. The curatorial team, led by Bana Kattan, associate head of exhibitions at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, began with the idea of sound frequencies as an organizing principle.
That sonic philosophy extends into the exhibition’s visual identity. A Jordanian design studio created the Washwasha logo by commissioning a seasoned calligrapher to render the word in Arabic script. Nassar expressed particular pride in the result. “If you look close, you’ll see the wall from the logo is actually turned. It is intentional. It looks like an ear. If you look really hard, it also looks like the bass clef in music. That is the beauty of the Arabic language. It’s not just squiggly lines. Each one signifies something,” she said.
Visitors enter the UAE National Pavilion through Taus Makhacheva’s work titled And What Did You Say?, a piece exploring how gossip relates to the body itself. A newer component, activated in July, is a bench housing ephemera that will anchor a live performance. Three dancers, each representing a different stage of gossip, will move through the space and interact with visitors, embodying how rumors spread organically through human presence.
Jawad Al-Malhi’s Naiman (2008/2026) reconstructs the architecture of Hammam Al-Ayn, a historic public bathhouse in East Jerusalem. The work centers on recordings Al-Malhi made in 2008 with men in their seventies, none of whom remain alive today. These men spoke with candor and humor about a celebratory ritual they performed the night before their weddings, gathering with friends at one of Palestine’s oldest bathhouses. “What is really interesting is the tradition does not exist in that same way anymore,” Nassar noted.
Mays Al-Baik’s contribution, Kuni Kai Akuna Kama Aqul! (Be, so that I may be as I say!) (2026), consists of casts made from her own mouth as she attempted to speak a word that produced no audible sound. The casts preserve the physical record of her desire to communicate, hanging from the ceiling in the pattern of the Thuraya star cluster, the Pleiades, which appears throughout Arabic poetry. “A phrase from the Qur’an, so it like a celestial command,” Nassar said.
By contrast, Lamya Gargash’s Majlis series (2009) turns to the photographic. The series presents images of hosting spaces throughout the UAE, rooms that serve multiple functions: domestic spaces, institutional venues, and cultural centers where weddings, funerals, conversations, and problem-solving all occur. Nassar draws a direct line between this work and Al-Malhi’s bathhouse piece, reading both as sonic gathering spaces where community forms and dissolves.
Farah Al-Qasimi’s new commission, The Curse, is an 18-minute four-channel film set within a children’s theater. It follows a child who believes their scream brought a curse upon the village. Al-Qasimi filmed the piece in the UAE alongside members of the Habus tribe from the northern Emirates, who performed Al-Nadbah, a traditional practice where men scream across mountain tops to call the community together. Historical references thread through the film: pigeons that once served as domesticated messengers now perceived as urban nuisances, and a Pakistani shop-owner in Dubai reading his original poetry alongside a ChatGPT translation.
Alaa Edris’s Wiswas closes the exhibition with three wooden self-portrait sculptures fitted with animatronic eyes that rotate to represent past, present, and future. “I really love this work because it is not only about technology, but it talks about how language translates differently from one person to the other,” Nassar said.
The artists represented span multiple generations and diverse origins yet share a connection to the UAE. “What I want people to note when they visit this space is that our artists are multi-generational and from diverse places but all have a certain tie to the UAE. We really wanted to highlight that in Venice,” Nassar said. Whether that shared tie deepens or shifts as the exhibition runs through November remains the open question Washwasha leaves hanging in the air.
More information about the exhibition can be found at https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2655784/lifestyle.