The Third Line gallery in Dubai has declared a group show at Cromwell Place in London with pieces by Anuar Khalifi, Sara Naim, and Sophia Al-Maria (2-9 June, 4 Cromwell Place, London, UK).

The show, which includes painting, sculpture photography, and video, offers unexpected insights on identity, image-making, and history while examining the link between human memory and the material world. Khalifi's paintings, which will be shown concurrently in an online exhibition, explore identity via the fusion of actual and fictional worlds. The semi-autobiographical portraits are the result of the artist's imagination. He represents familiar moments in present and historical communal memory and superimposes his sentiments and reactions to them, primarily inspired by current events.

He physically and symbolically puts himself into the scene, challenging representation and also societal and political reactions to these occurrences. His skillful use of modernist painting techniques and the category of portraiture play an important part in contesting portrayal in art and expressing presence in cultural centers: he rewrites the history of art. He is self-taught and has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa, which include, many others, Ce qui s'oublie et ce qui reste, Musée National d'histoire de l'immigration, Paris (2021); Personal Mythologies, Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris (2020); and Forever Is A Current Event, The Third Line, Dubai (2019).

MACAAL, Musée d'Art Contemporain Africain Al-Maaden, Marrakech, Morocco, has purchased his art. Naim's sculptural photos investigate the concept of boundaries and how much it impacts our perspective. She investigates the absence of boundaries between objects and underlines the sinuous borderline between perception and reality by using scientific instruments to research micro formations. The exhibition includes works from two current groups: Reaction and Tingling, Throbbing, Waves.

The latter investigates the materialization of emotions and body feelings, with each painting made of felt feelings and abstract actions that generate concrete, physical shapes.

During numerous Vipassana (seeing things as they would be, one of India's most ancient meditation practices) sessions led by Naim, she requested the sitters to sketch their experiences, whereupon she subsequently detail-selected, enlarged, printed, and sculpted to inform her photographic sculptures. The process of physically, cognitively, and emotionally converting experiences into shape attempts to bridge the gap between imagination and perception. Reaction is a series of sculptural pictures that intensify a tiny region of Polaroid film, showing the uneven microcosms generated by chemical changes along with light, the foundation of analog photography.

By transforming these two-dimensional scans into organic three-dimensional structures, Naim highlights the technique of photography at the molecular level, asking issues about the medium and image production overall. She acquired her MFA in Fine Art Media from The Slade School of Fine Art in London (2014), her Bachelors in Photography from London College of Communication (2010), and her Art Foundation from Chelsea College of Art in London (2007).

Science Fictions, Centre Photographique Rouen, Rouen, France (2019); Building Blocks, The Third Line, Dubai (2019); Tribe: Contemporary Photography from Art World, Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC, USA (2018); and The Third Image (Biennale des Photographes du Monde Arabe Contemporain), Institut du Monde Arab and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Galerie Binome, Paris, France (2017). Limerent Object II by Al-Maria is trance-inducing tone poetry meditating on deeper time and history. The film, portion of the Limerent Object series, investigates mythologies and also the world's life cycle, along with the remnants of an apocalyptic future — a common motif in her sci-fi-influenced works.

The movie, which was initially commissioned in 2019 for Faena Art in Miami, is shown in front of a fireplace, which draws and transfixes the spectator. She is a writer, artist, and filmmaker who earned her MFA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She invented the term Gulf Futurism with singer Fatima Al Qadiri to explain how the future anticipated by the West is already becoming a real thing in the Gulf.

Bitch Omega, Julia Stoschek, Dusseldorf, Germany (2020); Beast-Type Song, Tate Britain, London (2019); Sophia Al-Maria: BCE, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2019); Biennale of Moving Images, Miami, USA (2017); Black Friday, Whitney Museum, New York (2016); The 9th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012), and many more of her art-works has been displayed in several international exhibits.

It has been purchased by worldwide institutions and foundations such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY, USA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, USA, Art Jameel in Dubai, UAE, MATHAF in Doha, Qatar, and the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, UAE.

The Third Line is excited to be a part of Abu Dhabi Art's first and only pop-up event at Cromwell Place in London, which would also draw together four galleries from UAE, including Tabari Artspace, Isabelle Van Den Eynde, Lawrie Shabibi, and itself, and an art show of Beyond: Emerging Artists by Abu Dhabi Art. It expresses gratitude to Abu Dhabi Art and the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi for their involvement in the collaborative exhibition.

The Third Line is a Dubai-based art gallery that promotes contemporary artists locally, regionally, and globally. It was established in 2005. It also conducts non-profit, alternative events to raise awareness and conversation about the region.

Artists represented include Abbas Akhavan, Anuar Khalifi, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H Fallah, Farah Al Qasimi, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, and Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Laleh Khorramian, Lamya Gargash, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Sara Naim, Sophia Al-Maria, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Youssef Nabil and Zineb Sedira.