Created for this exhibition, She Became Aggressive is part of Sophia Al-Maria’s new body of monumental ink and watercolour paintings, through which she returns to drawing while continuing the visual and thematic concerns of her broader practice. A dark, elongated silhouette confronts a paler animal figure, with the scene's tension concentrated in their mouths, bodies, and the red bar held between them. Olive and acid green washes form an unstable field around the figures, while the raw handling of ink and paint prevents the image from settling into a single, resolved state.

The work takes its title from one of the phrases Al-Maria identifies as part of the vocabulary of abandonment. Once behaviour is converted into identity, the animal no longer merely behaves aggressively; it is aggressive. The title therefore becomes part of the work’s structure, demonstrating how language can transform a changing condition into a fixed designation and make exclusion appear inevitable. The painting locates itself precisely at this point of transformation, where a body moves from one state into another and carries the pressure of the former into the next.