Rizq Art Initiative invites audiences into a world where memory, myth, and imagination intersect from September 19 to November 30, 2025

Rizq Art Initiative (RAi), an independent, artist-led social enterprise in Abu Dhabi, has announced its latest exhibition titled The Imaginary Museum. Held from September 19th to November 30th 2025, the exhibition at the Rizq Art Gallery in Al Reem Island will feature 27 artists from the UAE and around the world.

The Imaginary Museum takes inspiration from André Malraux’s concept of a “museum without walls”—a space where artworks live beyond their material form, carried forward through memory, imagination, and interpretation. In the exhibition, viewers can see how the artists reconsider art as a vessel for both personal and collective remembrance, thus creating the artworks not as fixed objects but as fragments of ongoing narratives.

Drawing also on Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of hybridity and Umberto Eco’s idea of the “open work,” the show emphasizes fluidity, transformation, and the active role of the viewer in shaping meaning. Through painting, sculpture, digital practices, and material experimentation, participating artists explore how memory, identity, and cultural consciousness are constantly redefined across time and space.

The Imaginary Museum will see intergenerational Emirati artists including Hassan Sharif, a regional pioneer in contemporary art and one of the four artists who established the Flying House, Afra Al Dhaheri renowned for her sculptural works of braids that are a cornerstone to her practice and a meditation on her heritage as an Emirati woman, and Maktoum Al Maktoum whose artwork made out of the remains of gazelles preserve time and memory. The exhibition will also showcase international artists such as Solimán López from Spain whose Hardiskmuseum is a unique repository of artists’ files curated into a hard disk which stores DNA-like information, Christopher Joshua Benton, a UAE-based American artist responding to the Kandoora as an object, Indu Antony from India whose olfactory artwork with the distilled smell of rain captures a memory that fades, and Abdulrahim Al Kendi from Oman who will showcase a translation of the Quran in Binary.

Christopher Joshua Benton, a UAE-based American artist responding to the Kandoora as an object

Founded in 2023 by Shafeena Yusuff Ali, an art collector, scholar and philanthropist, RAi has rapidly grown into a vital presence within the arts ecosystem of Abu Dhabi and beyond. Fully owned and operated by a team of women and rooted in the spirit of collaboration, RAi creates opportunities for dialogue and exchange through exhibitions, research, and interdisciplinary projects.

Yusuff Ali commented, “This show redefines the very concept of the museum, transforming it from vessel to voice, from archive to shared exploration. Every artwork here is a fragment of a larger story still being written. The Imaginary Museum reimagines the artworks as a medium for memory and identity, and raises questions that are very real.”

The Imaginary Museum has been conceptualized by RAi’s Chief Curator Meena Vari, an accomplished curator and academic who has served as Dean at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, and curated for the Center for Experimental Media & Arts (CEMA). A Chevening Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, she has collaborated with institutions including Tate UK and the Kochi Biennale Foundation, bringing a wealth of international curatorial and leadership experience to the Initiative.

Previous exhibitions at RAi this year included Being Is Elsewhere; Gathering Wood, Gather Words in collaboration with NYU Research Kitchens; The Fragile Birth of Fire and Imperial Silhouettes: Shadows of Sovereignty. Attach