Massage Cards
In the context of Alawadhi work, she regards the glitch as a contemporary aberration befitting the age of the internet. It is a form of psychosomatic art developed through the culmination of culture and progressively efficient technology – a rejection of the accepted norm of function. In the case of Abu Dhabi, the massage cards found scattered on the sidewalks and stuck between car windows can feel like a glitch, when considering the harsh dualism that exists in the portrayed image and lived realities of the city. These colorful rectangles bear clashing fonts and stolen images indicative of certain target demographics, whether it is a badly cropped photo of a K-pop star or Angelina Jolie. They juxtapose starkly against the backdrop of hushed intermingling and assumed ideological commonalities between the inhabitants, but are also regarded with an indifference suggesting a collective satirical understanding of the innuendo “Happy Ending”. The massage cards are gateways to the liminal threshold between different realities of the city.
Aliyah Alawadhi (b.1996, UAE) is an artist and writer. She received her BFA in Animation Design with a Minor in Curatorial Practices from Zayed University in 2020. Based in Abu Dhabi, she uses her works to pay ode to the subtleties of growing up in an environment that is seemingly in constant cultural and industrial flux. These influences are communicated through themes of nostalgia, gender, mysticism, globalization and internet culture.
Instagram: @aliyahalawadhi
Saif Chilmiran, (b. 1990, Toronto) grew up in the economic boom of Abu Dhabi. At around nine years old in the late 90’s, he was part of a multicultural underground punk scene developed by the diverse youth. That’s what sparked a fire in Chilmiran to visually communicate his observations on the denial of real, and candy-wrapped ruses: environmental, conceptual, macro, socio-political topics to name a few. “How can I zoom out further?” he asks.
Instagram: @saifbchilmiran