Tashkeel is pleased to present Provisional Sanctuaries, a solo exhibition by Malaysian artist and designer Shamin Sharum.

The exhibition reflects on the quiet, temporary musollas that appear across the UAE’s urban landscape. Often found in warehouses, shopfronts, and back rooms, these modest prayer spaces are shaped by necessity rather than formal design. Through paintings, drawings, and maquettes, Sharum examines how fleeting environments can create belonging, stillness, and connection among strangers joined by faith in the city.

Provisional Sanctuaries explores the spatial and emotional presence of temporary prayer spaces within a city defined by migration, movement, and constant change.

Unlike monumental mosques, musollas often appear and disappear according to circumstance. They are formed through everyday need, repeated use, and shared ritual. Informal signs, improvised ablution areas, prayer mats, shelves, corners, and traces of use become markers of presence, familiarity, and collective belonging.

By lifting these spaces out of their functional settings, Sharum invites viewers to look closely at details that are often overlooked. His works isolate, flatten, and reconstruct fragments of these environments, allowing the audience to reconsider how sacredness can emerge through practice, memory, and human presence rather than architecture alone.

“Provisional Sanctuaries explores the quiet spatial moments found in makeshift Muslim prayer spaces commonly used by South Asian communities in the UAE. Relocating to Dubai made me feel like an outsider, but discovering a small cabin-like musolla tucked within a transient site during my early days provided an unexpected sense of familiarity, softening my feelings of displacement.”

— Shamin Sharum