Everything Folds, Unfolds, Refolds: Sophia Al-Maria, Manal AlDowayan, Aziza Kadyri, Raya Kassisieh, Almagul Menlibayeva, and Elnara Nasirli
Gazelli Art House is pleased to present Everything Folds, Unfolds, Refolds, a group exhibition curated by Dr. Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera, bringing together six artists whose practices explore how histories, materials and cultural knowledge survive through transformation.
Taking its title from Gilles Deleuze’s writing on the fold, the exhibition considers the past and present not as separate or opposing states, but as continually shaping one another. For Deleuze, the fold describes an ongoing process through which forms persist by changing: folding, unfolding and refolding as they move between different times, contexts and conditions. Across the exhibition, this becomes a framework for thinking about inheritance itself. What is carried forward is never simply preserved. It is translated, reworked and made newly present.
Spanning installation, sculpture, textile, moving image, photographic process, painting and ceramics, the exhibition brings this proposition into dialogue with practices rooted across Central Asia, the Gulf and their diasporas. Rather than presenting a single geography or narrative, the works reveal unexpected connections between inherited techniques, ecological histories, technological systems and the body.
