Breathing the Same Time

In recent years, contemporary art in the Gulf has often explored the region through broad themes: identity, tradition, modernization, migration. Same Air, the group show hosted by Tabari Artspace in Dubai, takes a sideways step. Rather than asking artists to interpret a topic, it chooses to observe what happens when each simply continues doing their job. The result is an exhibition that forgoes constructing a unified narrative and prefers to record the multiple frequencies of a single present. The title is almost a guide to its method. "Breathing the Same Air" doesn't mean sharing a style, but rather living in the same cultural and political climate, in a region that in recent years has experienced profound transformations and a sudden centrality in the international art system. The works on display don't illustrate this change; they absorb it. And precisely for this reason, they end up speaking to it more effectively. The fourteen invited artists - including Hazem Harb, Lulwah Al Homoud, Zeinab Alhashemi, Aya Haidar, Maitha Abdalla, and Tagreed Darghouth - come from different generations and backgrounds. Some work on memory and exile, others on geometric abstraction, and others transform everyday materials into sculptures or installations. Seen together, their works don't seek a common denominator: rather, they demonstrate how the Gulf art scene is now too complex to be interpreted through a single lens. Same Air is also a reflection on the role of the group exhibition. Instead of guiding the visitor toward a conclusion, it allows contradictions, languages, and diverse sensibilities to coexist. The air evoked by the title thus becomes a metaphor for the present: something everyone breathes, but each perceives and reflects in an irreducibly personal way.