Eman Al Hashemi: The Horizon We Inherit : Iris Projects, MiZa, Abu Dhabi

Iris Projects is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by Emirati artist Eman Al Hashemi (b. Dubai, 1993), opening 26 September 2026 in its gallery space in MiZa, Abu Dhabi. The Horizon We Inherit examines the shifting temporalities, infrastructures, and perceptual conditions of urban life in the United Arab Emirates. Working across ceramics, printmaking and mixed media, Al Hashemi investigates the systems through which contemporary experience is organised: the routes that structure daily movement, the artificial illuminations that shape public space, and the habitual routines through which urban environments are encountered and internalised.

Working with clay, Al Hashemi gives these concerns material form. Her sculptural works combine and unsettle the exhibition’s central motifs, the sun, streetlight, building, and roundabout, into hybrid structures that appear at once recognisable and unfamiliar. On the occasion of this exhibition, the publication includes an essay by Maya Allison, Chief Curator and Executive Director of the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Galleries.

The Horizon We Inherit considers the built environment not as a passive backdrop to daily life, but as an active force in the production of attention, memory, and bodily rhythm. Al Hashemi asks what is lost when cities are reshaped through expansion and redevelopment, and what may persist when a place survives only as a trace: within the body, a photograph, a map, or a repeatedly travelled route.