Page 122 - MOC PR REPORT - OCT 2025

10/13/25, 11:54 AM Nja Mahdaoui show opens season at Bassam Freiha Art Foundation

Nja Mahdaoui at work.

The Art Circle Award: Story of a Dot (Nov. 3-12) is being hosted in collaboration with The Art Circle, the fifth edition of the annual awards and takes
inspiration from Bauhaus principles and Arab modernism, inviting artists to explore the transformative power of the dot.

The group exhibition showcases finalists alongside previous winners, underscoring the award’s important role in nurturing regional talent. Al Burda
Exhibition — The Shape of Meaning (Nov. 18 – Jan. 25, 2026) is in response to Nja Mahdaoui’s retrospective. It presents loans from the Ministry
of Culture UAE’s Al Burda exhibition from 2008 — 2023, an annual show where contemporary artists engage with the cultural and semantic power
of the written word, while experimenting with form and medium. The exhibition stages a dialogue between calligraphy as abstract form and as
linguistic tradition, showing how artists today both inherit and reinvent tradition.

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