“A form is never finished, only paused.” - Alia Lootah
-
-
In her new body of work, Alia Lootah deepens her longstanding inquiry into form, material, and transformation, bringing painting, drawing, and sculpture into a shared vocabulary of movement. At the center of her practice is an attentiveness to shapes and their capacity to shift, lengthen, collapse, or reappear in altered configurations. Lootah approaches form as something living, animated by internal rhythms, always in transition and always approaching a state of becoming without ever fully arriving. The works rest in a delicate threshold between recognition and ambiguity, allowing meaning to surface quietly and gradually, rather than through immediate clarity.
-
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: Cocoon 2, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
51 x 41 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Suspended balance, 2025Aluminum and printed wire
30 x 50 cm
55.5 x 25 cm (Pedestal only) -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: Cocoon 1, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
51 x 41 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Wondering forms, 2025Acrylic on Canvas
150 x 100 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Shifting forms, 2025Acrylic on Canvas
150 x 100 cm
-
-
Her sculptural language carries this sensibility forward with intention and restraint. Moving fluidly between drawing, weaving, and sculpture, Lootah explores how simple materials can generate complexity through repetition and touch. The knitted works, which anchor the exhibition, embody this relationship between gesture and form. For Lootah, knitting is not simply craft or method, but a meditative act shaped by rhythm, memory, and the slow accretion of labor. The pliant surfaces interact dynamically with the solidity of their pedestals, which function as active counterforces attempting to stabilize structures that inherently resist containment. This interplay between softness and firmness, fluidity and structure, reflects the larger dualities that animate her practice.
-
-
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: shell, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: vessel, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: fold, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: life, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: drift, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: split, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: tide, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: breath, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
35.5 x 25 cm
-
-
Everyday materials ground Lootah’s approach, bringing the works into conversation with the textures and gestures of domestic labor and lived experience. These materials lend the sculptures a sense of familiarity, yet the forms that emerge remain open and unresolved. They hover in a state of quiet becoming, suggestive without being literal, intimate without being defined. Their shifting character invites viewers to engage with them not through immediate recognition, but through observation, patience, and sensitivity to subtle change.
-
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: current, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: shift, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: strand, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: seed, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: rise, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: flow, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: pulse, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18 -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Becoming: orb, 2025Acrylic on canvas
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Metal brackets (rear), ready to hang
24 x 18
-
-
Across the exhibition, her paintings and drawings echo the internal movement found within the sculptural works. Lines circle back on themselves, shapes fragment and return, and gestures migrate fluidly across mediums. These exchanges create a subtle and continuous dialogue between two-and three-dimensional forms, highlighting the ways in which ideas shift as they move from one material state to another. The works trace the migration of form as it repeats, mutates, and adjusts its meaning depending on the material that holds it.
-
-
The exhibition also offers space to reflect on the relationship between repetition and transformation. Through the steady logic of accumulated gestures, Lootah suggests that change does not always occur in dramatic shifts, but often through small and nearly imperceptible alterations. The works embody this quiet form of evolution, reminding us that transformation can be gentle, persistent, and intertwined with the rhythms of everyday life. In this sense, the exhibition becomes not only a study of material form, but also an observation of time, labor, and attention.
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah
Held in the corner, 2025Aluminum and printed wire
100 x 30 cm
70 x 25 x 50 cm (Pedestal only) -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Between two walls, 2025Aluminum and printed wire
31 x 60 cm
15.5 x 52.5 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Soft resistance, 2025Aluminum and printed wire
15 x 74 cm
50 x 30 cm (Pedestal only)
-
-
Taken together, Alia Lootah’s latest works articulate a nuanced and poetic understanding of transformation and the internal life of forms. Through the interplay of material, structure, and gesture, she constructs a visual language that is grounded in the everyday yet oriented toward something more expansive and unseen. The exhibition encourages viewers to slow their pace, to attend to the subtle shifts embedded within each work, and to witness the quiet beauty of forms continually unfolding.
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 1, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
40 x 19 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 2, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
46.5 x 25 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 3, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
39 x 24 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 4, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
26 x 22 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 5, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
26 x 20 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 6, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
23.5 x 23 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 7, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
26.5 x 21.5 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 8, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
39 x 15 cm
-
-
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 9, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
26.5 x 21..5 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 10, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
39 x 24 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 11, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
29 x 21 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 12, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
49 x 20 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 13, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
18 x 20 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 14, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
28 x 21 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 15, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
23 x 16 cm -
Alia Hussain Lootah
Sequence 16, 2025Acrylic paint and lacquer
Framing: Unframed
Mount: Wooden brackets (rear), ready to hang
23.5 x 14 cm
-
-
Alia Hussain Lootah (b. Dubai, 1987) is an Emirati artist, whose current work focuses on bodies of art with the theme of understanding the interpersonal relationship between mother and child in today’s modern world. Uncertainty stems from both external and internal factors of unrest.Alia recently had a solo presentation at Art Dubai 2024, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE (2024) and Abu Dhabi Art 2022, Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022). She has participated in several exhibitions including Dubai Calligraphy Biennale (2023); The Quest, Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2022); Sikka Art Fair, Dubai, UAE (2011, 2012, and 2013); Mawtini, Tashkeel, Dubai, UAE (2013); Metamorphosis, Tashkeel, Dubai, UAE (2013); and 40 Poems from the Desert, The Ara Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2011). Alia participated as one of the first artists in the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship Program (SEAF), graduating in 2014. Her SEAF thesis focused on exploring motherhood through different forms of sculptures. In 2017, Alia co-founded the Medaf Studio in Dubai, an art centre aimed at introducing children and adults to art as a form of self-expression and creativity.
