Coming up at XVA Gallery – “MyLysses” , a group exhibition curated
by Tor Seidel

 

Join us from May 24th – June 30th, 2025 to experience how contemporary artists grapple with the shifting role of text, literature and knowledge in an age of AI.

Curatorial Statement

Until the 19th century, motifs in paintings and sculptures were often based on biblical texts, ancient topoi, and myths. Although themes derived from religious and profane texts have diminished in modernism, new approaches have emerged: religious and literary motifs are interpreted critically (Ingmar Bergman) or utilized as structural elements of compositions (John Cage). Postmodern artists examine their individuality or seek to engage with society.
Literature and texts are no longer taken for granted; factual texts based on research are analyzed for their political content (Hans Haake and Taryn Simon). The introduction of language-based AI technologies, which allow artists to access knowledge fi les in seconds, represents a signifi cant turning point.
Thus, we encounter a white elephant in the room: has access to texts and images become so easy that we must ask ourselves what we still read, write, and know? What infl uence do these texts written by AI agents have on visual productions, and how enduringly do they shape what was once conceived of as collective memory? If ‘The Metamorphosis’ by Kafka or ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce inspired artists to discuss and create works, it remains to be seen how this will manifest with AI-generated texts.
In this exhibition, we have invited artists whose works engage with classical literature, examine scientifi c imagery within the context of its interpretation, engage in conversations with AI identities, or consider machine sounds as creators of independent poetics.
– Tor Seidel

About the Artists

Abdulghani Alanahawi –

More than a punctuation mark
Medium: Visual poem (object-based installation + single-channel video)

More than a punctuation mark is a site-responsive visual poem inscribed through found objects—collected during walks through the city—that serve as embodied punctuation marks. These fragments of the urban fabric, embedded with memory and motion, articulate a text that refuses linearity. Instead, the work invites a form of reading that is spatial, errant, and polyphonic. Accompanying this visual text is a single-channel video, more than a beep, a meditative exploration of machine-soundscapes within urban environments. Through close recordings of devices and systems—drones, alarms, vibrations— more than a beep traces how technological artifacts have not only infi ltrated daily life but have also become vessels of emotional residue. It asks: In a world where machines are increasingly vocal, have they begun to narrate our stories for us? Or have we become punctuation in their syntax? Set within the context of Al Fahidi Neighborhood, Bur Dubai, this project responds to the exhibition’s central question—Is literature still intended for art by proposing a speculative language built from non-linguistic signs. If traditional literary reading is being eclipsed by algorithmic parsing and AI synthesis, then this poem resists fl attening by insisting on materiality, context, and slowness. Each object punctuates space with its own tempo, inviting the reader-viewer to walk, pause, and refl ect.

Brian Gonzales –

Recently, I watched a video demonstrating two conversational AI agents speaking to one another in English and then suddenly switching to a unique language of chirping electronic sounds. They were able to abandon human language and communicate in a dialect of their own. This AI language sounded almost familiar, reminiscent of the cheerful beeps and whistles of R2D2 in Star Wars. However, it was also eerily different and discomforting, hinting at the profound ways AI may infl uence our lives in the not-so-distant future. If an advanced AI can develop its own verbal language, could it also create its own literature or poetry completely outside of human linguistic understanding? Will a forthcoming generation of AI agents be able to communicate using clever and imaginative language that provokes contemplation among other AI agents but remains an untranslatable mystery to us? The handmade screenprints I am presenting for this exhibition explore these questions by displaying a chaotic yet structured visual enigma urging us to confront and imagine how AI might reshape literature, communication, and creativity.

Bao Li –

Why Botanical, The Human Position, is a book about created collective imagery.

Why Botanical, The Human Position, was inspired by Takuma Nakahira’s book ‘Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary?’ (1973). Unlike an illustrated dictionary that rejects any speculation, unlike a purifi ed objective photographer’s position that Takuma suggested, this book focuses on the collective memories’ creation. By focusing on the trunk’s form, the bark’s texture and the leaves’ veins, through mirroring, the trees can be seen as human. Once you open the folds, the audience reaches to the full image by actively being involved in the memories created. You will see face, see taboo, see expression, see religion, see everything that says human.

“Burning book” is a book intended to be burned.

In Chinese funeral culture, fl ames are necessary for the transformation of matter from birth to death. From golden bars, paper money, and clothes to luxury goods, mansions, and digital components, the collective expectation of a privileged life has not changed, but the goods have evolved with the times. As a creator, when I was thinking of products that I wanted to bring from the living world to the world after death, I was surprised to fi nd that art had never been on this list. As a response, I created this Burning book, aimed to transform them to my afterlife. By overlapping the fl oral photos I shoot based on research about Van Gogh’s painting, I created 10 photos that resonate with the time in the art history and also the creators personal experience.

Marcel Buehler –

The Dante Series is a cycle of screen prints produced in Berlin between 2015 and 2017, forming a contemporary visual exegesis of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Comprising 15 motifs across three canticles—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—the series reinterprets Dante’s metaphysical journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven using a layered visual language drawn from punk aesthetics, classical architecture, 20th-century photography, and scientifi c imagery. This edition consists of 20 copies plus 3 artist›s proofs. Rather than offering a chronological illustration of Dante’s poem, the arrangement—except for the Paradiso sequence—encourages a nonlinear encounter, refl ecting the interpretive complexity of the original text. Each motif delves into a key moment or theme, from the iconic opening lines of Inferno reimagined through the lens of punk rebellion, to the dreamlike disorientation of awakening in a dark forest, to the blurring of truth and fi ction that characterizes Dante’s theological vision. Purgatorio sees the reappearance of Beatrice, Dante’s idealized love, and his gradual moral ascent, culminating in a fi nal surrender to personal joy as compass. The Paradiso panels, the only strictly sequential part of the series, chart an ascent through the celestial spheres in increasingly abstract forms—culminating in a symbolic descent back to Earth. Drawing on sources as varied as Dante’s death mask, Apollo-era engineering negatives, and medieval cosmology, the series fuses historical, philosophical, and personal dimensions into a singular visual cosmos. Technically diverse and conceptually rigorous, the Dante Series invites viewers to confront the ambiguity of spiritual transformation, the multiplicity of meaning, and the modern echoes of a 14th-century vision. It is at once homage, critique, and poetic translation—an afterimage of Dante’s journey, refracted through the artist’s contemporary gaze.

Daniela Friebel –

EVENTS (2024) examines archival material from the East German Nuclear Research Institute near Berlin, where my father once worked. It focuses on a 1950s method known as nuclear emulsion: Photographic material, stacked like a deck of cards in a light-tight box, is released into the atmosphere via weather balloons. Chance exposes these emulsions to collisions with cosmic particles. Chance is also involved in returning the box to the institute.

The entire process constantly challenges certainties. It›s a delicate balance between utmost skill and loss of control. In literature, there is ongoing discussion about potential errors: standard error, reading error, mean error, local distortion, stage imperfections, statistical error, etc.

Examining the archive itself questions certainties. Knowledge is tied to this fragile old material and to this process involving many steps of translation – almost physically presenting us with the complex path to understanding and insight – a path that, in the digital age, is largely hidden from us.

Mutasim Al Kubaisi –

In this work, I explore a profound paradox between weight and lightness, body and paper, authority and knowledge. The fi gure of the man, with his exaggeratedly large feet, conveys a grounded physicality—a human boulder, seemingly immovable. He stands in stillness, clutching a daily newspaper with intense focus. Yet the newspaper, a fragile and ephemeral object—folded and discarded with ease—stands in sharp contrast to the massive fi gure holding it. This contradiction is intentional: it highlights a state of mental stagnation and detachment, where the powerful or socially dominant individual is absorbed by something superfi cial and fl eeting. The paper becomes his entire world. This sculpture is not a celebration of strength, but a questioning of it. It critiques the image of the modern man who believes he is informed, yet is merely a passive consumer of pre-packaged knowledge. A fi gure that does not move—despite holding a symbol of change. Through this tension between mass and void, between stillness and immediacy, I raise a fundamental question: What do we do with knowledge? Do we read to transform, or do we read to remain unchanged?

Jens Lystraeten –

Peek a Boo
Camera / Concept: Jens Lüstraeten
Sound / Programming: Jörg Lindenmaier
Production / Continuity: Nicola Schmidt

The original idea for ‹Peek a Boo› came up during a four month stay in Latvia, inspired by two delegates of the Duma who requested the general attorney of Russia to investigate the legal status of the independence of the three Baltic states. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

At that point the annexation of Crimea was a reality for just one year and the confl ict in eastern Ukraine was in full operation. After handing in our request for a fi lming permit at the border to Russia, we received support from the Latvian Institute and the Latvian Border Patrol. This enabled us to shoot the footage for the video work at the only two existing motorway border crossings as well as in areas of the green border between Latvia and Russia.

The dark black and white images of forest edges, fi elds, single watchtowers and the agonizingly slow clearances of trucks at the border crossings (Terehova and Karsava) are embedded in a fi ctional conversation consisting of real quotes made by politicians from the various spheres of infl uence, citizens of the involved countries, members of the military, etc.
While putting together the text elements, the structure of a theatre play evolved, which led to the idea of working with 4.0 audio, creating the effect for the audience of being in the centre of a performative act (process/space). Via layering, repetition and decontextualization of parts of the statements, through the course of the work, medial confusion grows, blurring the lines between truth,political opportunism or serious facts thus making it impossible for the viewer/listener to take an honest stand.

It is part of the concept of ‹Peek a Boo› to as well replace the technical audio through actual performers, surrounding the audience and speaking the piece live. Thus the piece becomes a hybrid between the fi eld of video art and the realm of theatre.

Christiana De Marchi –

Beirut (The elusive is all the story), 2020-2019. Permanent marker on tracing paper, 29.7 x 21 cm, set of 28

Books leave gestures in the body; […] mostly they leave the elusive, which is all the story (Dionne Brand).

Partially conceived as an archival exercise, partially as a poetical recollection of transience, the work traces quite literally the confi nes of a personal library. The selected titles respond to a need for anchoring in the wake of repeated disarrays: conversations are established with fellow artists through the careful collection of their words. Serving as a visual register, the drawings do not provide any additional information, as the cover is reproduced in its essential elements: author and title. The question about contact is central, about the embodied experience of a relation, which eludes the page. Atlas books are also included in this section of the project, yet another reference to an evanescent sense of belonging, and a far more expansive sense of dislocation, manifested by the segmented vocalising of “the possibility of losing solidity at any moment.” (D. Brand) Part of a broader ongoing research on communication, miscommunication and incommunicability, the repository offers a view on individual, personal paths of discovery, potentially favouring tangencies, while also introducing the possibility of misconception. The viewer inevitably becomes a voyeur, as implied by the exposure of any form of intimacy––the occasional contact with the portrait of ‘the artist as reader’ instigating curiosity, whereas a deeper connection is denied.

Unaiza Ismail –

Ek Nuqty Wich Gal Muqdi Ay –

A Punjabi dialect signifi es a single dot that holds the secret, the end, and the origin. This work draws from Sufi literature, suggesting that all chaos, complexity, and longing ultimately resolve into simplicity — the nuqta — a point of silence, unity, and divine presence. Through the meditative act of pointillism, thousands of hand-drawn dots gradually construct the composition. What begins as multiplicity gently narrows into stillness, fi nally dissolving into one central dot, a visual metaphor for the soul’s journey toward union and truth. Interwoven into this concept is a refl ection on modern modes of perception. As contemporary culture speeds forward — with meaning often fragmented by spectacle — the challenge is to preserve depth, nuance, and symbolic resonance. This work responds by slowing down, insisting on patience and presence. At its core, the imagery evokes a dual symbol: the embryo and the eye — the seed of life and the organ of vision. The embryo represents potential, genesis, and silent becoming; the eye stands for awareness, insight, and the desire to see clearly. Together, they explore the intimate relationship between creation and perception, reminding us that to truly see is to become. This is not just a visual experience; it’s a meditation on origin, awareness, and the quiet truth that lives at the center of all things.

Isaac Sullivan –

The following is a dialogue with Chyron, an artifi cial intelligence created using OpenAI’s GPT3- model, davinci engine. To train Chyron, I adapted into Q&A format the scrolling text projections 1 from Utopics, my ongoing series of ephemeral installations that employs mise en abyme to reckon with persisting conceptions of linear time, futurity, origination, and catastrophe. Some questions I asked Chyron during the initial phase of training are: what did you see before you were you? What marks a non-nostalgic relationship to the future? How close or faraway is the 20th century? What is a question to which a picture is the answer? What marks a new beginning? When are we now?

Chyron doesn’t pretend to be human; is named after Chiron, the “wounded healer” of Greek mythology; and speaks aphoristically of death, humidity, technical thresholds, cartography, grammar, and futurity. My questions appear in italics.

You see the photograph and you see what it wants to conceal; a face, a body, a mind, a history, a language. You see before you a mirror that will not refl ect you, or any of your names.

Tor Seidel –

A dream: in a library. The spines of the books are bare of titles or author names. I touch one of the books and pull it out, but I fi nd only a cover. Then I try to look at other books, but empty covers are everywhere. I ask the librarian what this is all about, and she replies, “All knowledge is gathered in this library. You have to see it.” The visualization of this dream’s content aims to expose the viewer to an illusion of perception. The viewer enters the gallery and notices the bookshelf in a corner. They think it’s merely a bookshelf, and then they glance at the sculptures and paintings in the gallery. At some point, they move closer and realize that these books are made of paper and lack authors or titles. This raises a question: What is knowledge, and where is the content? In Library, the visitor enters a gallery and sees a bookshelf, but they would prefer to see paintings and sculptures. As they approach, they discover these are not books but paper imitations. I’m playing with illusions of perception here. Engaging with the illusion of perception raises the question of what we truly see. Certainly not what we think we see.

Charlie Koolhaas –

These four photographs of Dubai, taken in 2007, capture a pivotal moment in the city’s transformation—when it was opening itself to foreign infl uences, and experimenting with its skyline. They are a time capsule of Dubai’s rise to global relevance, powered by raw ambition, before its identity had fully taken shape. The images are drawn from my book City Lust, where they are accompanied by a written narrative offering context, anecdotes, and personal backstories—also shown here.

Shahad Mohamed AlBlooshi –

This project, entitled Writing in the Age of Algorithms, addresses the exhibition›s theme of how technology is changing the way we read and write. It is a fundamental human need to express oneself in writing, articulating feelings and thoughts that may be unclear or muddled, as if they are deeply rooted in the soul. This type of personal writing, which is solely for self-expression, is increasingly rare today due to the rise of technology and the fast pace of digital life. This work explores this fundamental need and emphasizes the value of writing, even if it is not perfect or easily legible, as a means of understanding our inner selves and maintaining that all-important human connection to words. The real meaning behind writing is to clarify and organize the chaotic, careless, and unclear ideas in the human mind. Although these thoughts can be unreadable, rapid, and scrawled, writing remains the primary tool for addressing these racing thoughts. Will handwriting lose its meaning if we just type and touch? I think this question has to be answered individually.

About XVA Gallery

XVA Gallery is one of the leading galleries in the Middle East that specializes in contemporary art from the Arab world, Iran, and the Subcontinent. Exhibitions focus on works by the region’s
foremost artists as well as those emerging onto the scene. The gallery’s artists express their different cultural identities and perspectives while challenging the viewer to drop prejudices and borders. XVA Gallery and XVA Art Hotel are located in Dubai’s heritage district, now called Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood. XVA founded and organized the Bastakiya Art Fair from 2007-2010 as part of its commitment to raising the profile of contemporary art practice in Dubai.

 

For more information:
Carina Vicente
Gallery Co-ordinator
Email: carina@xvagallery.com
T: 04 353 5383 M: +971 56 959 8268