United Arab Emirates 2026

Title: Washwasha
Commissioner: The Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation
Curator: Bana Kattan; assistant curator, Tala Nassar
Exhibitors: Mays Albaik, Jawad Al Malhi, Farah Al Qasimi, Alaa Edris, Lamya Gargash, and Taus Makhacheva

“Washwasha” – a phonetic transliteration of the Arabic word for “whispering” – brings together six artists whose practices contemplate contemporary soundscapes in the UAE as shaped by migration, transience, and long-term ties to the land. The exhibition uses sound as a lens to explore movement, technology, oral histories, and the relationship between language, body, and identity.

The curatorial premise situates these practices within a longer history of collective sound culture in the UAE: from oral storytelling and poetry circles to locally initiated broadcasting efforts, sound has long functioned as a platform for self-representation and communal exchange. The exhibition draws a line between these early collective forms and today’s technologically mediated listening cultures, asking how shifts in architectural, technological, and social infrastructure have transformed the ways communities hear and are heard – framing the UAE not as a fixed cultural form but as a space shaped by mobility, correspondence, and layered histories of transmission.

Inside the pavilion, the exhibition design by Büro Koray Duman Architects responds directly to the acoustic properties of the building itself, organising the space as a sequence of chambers that move visitors from zones of close, intimate listening to areas of noise and sonic overlap.