Tashkeel is pleased to present "So to Speak", a solo exhibition by Shamma Al Amri of Tashkeel's Critical Practice Programme 2022. The exhibition explores Shamma's ongoing research into language, meaning and social behaviour. This exhibition is the first public outcome by a participant of the Critical Practice Programme 2022.

During her time on the programme, she examined the specific use of language in oaths and took this as a starting point to develop her own ‘artist oath’. This led her to study habitual and customary words and to explore their legitimacy across contexts to reveal their degree of elasticity, transformation or resistance. During this process, Shamma honed in on the root of a single Arabic word that dictates correctness, exploring the multiplicity of meaning and context to navigate concepts of agency and social behavior within collective systems. Her particular interest lay in the study of Arabic text and its visual and theoretical implications as a means of shifting and expanding systems of engagement today. By drawing inspiration from pedagogical methods to popular culture, she invites the viewer to explore language as an expression of both image and meaning.

The programme was carefully constructed and built around Shamma’s practice and areas of research. She was mentored by the renowned typographer, writer and graphic designer Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès and acclaimed artist Mohammed Kazem.

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Gallery hours
Sunday – Thursday, 10 am – 10 pm; Friday 9 am – 12 pm

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Exhibition-related activities:

- Artist-led Guided Tour with Nasser Abdullah

- Poetry Evening with Shamma Al Amri and Nujoom Al Ghanem

- One-word Risograph Workshop with Shamma Al Amri and Ibraheem Khamayseh

- So to Speak – The Talk with Shamma Al Amri and Jolaine Frizzel