Artist Walkthrough: Abed Elmajid Shalabi

Artist Walkthrough: Abed Elmajid Shalabi
1353 U St NW, Washington, DC 20009
Saturday, April 13, 2024
3pm

Titled after a line from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem A State of Siege (2002), Abed Elmajid Shalabi’s exhibition When Tomorrow Arrives We Will Love Life will present completely new works that confront the realities of modernization in the post-oil Arab world, leaning into the question of the future.

Shalabi’s material vernacular ranges from fragile ceramics to commercial concrete. Castings of vehicular and industrial objects such as construction truck seats, gas pumps, shock-resistant rubber mats, and truck beds function as emotional provocations, interrogating the illusions of progress, safety, and direction that have been prescribed by the Western gaze. By exposing surface cracks, emptiness, and other moments of vulnerability, Shalabi pushes against the speed of modernity and the ways in which its false promises alter our connection to the body, gender, and self.