Juma Alhaj: Revelation / Archipelago of Whispers

421 Arts Campus presents Revelation, a solo exhibition by Juma Alhaj, and Archipelago of Whispers, a group exhibition curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr, on view from October 4, 2026 through January 10, 2027. 

Revelation is the first institutional solo exhibition by Emirati artist Juma Alhaj. Grounded in reading, journaling, and philosophical inquiry, the exhibition addresses reflection and self-discovery, extending Alhaj's practice beyond painting into installation for the first time.

Archipelago of Whispers is curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr and brings together works by Aliaskar Abarkas, Ruba Al-Sweel, Farah Al Qasimi, Gizem Karakaş, Yen Chun Lin, Omar Mismar, and Ayman Zedani. Through video, sound, installation, and performance, the exhibition examines how knowledge is formed through informal modes of communication, including whispers, murmurs, hums, gossip, and storytelling.

Juma Alhaj: Revelation
Juma Alhaj’s inscriptions unfold throughout Revelation and appear in various media, including glass, fabric, light, and architecture.

The exhibition opens with Balaa (2026), a diptych developed through Alhaj’s tally-mark system, tracing the accumulation of experiences that shape a sense of self. Traces (2026), a series of engraved glass panels, uses light and reflection to shift engraved marks between visibility and disappearance. Hijr (2026) is a secluded installation where light, shadow, movement, and sound encourage contemplation. Suspended fabric panels surround a water feature, while the carpeted exhibition invites visitors to enter barefoot. Revelation is not about arriving at a definitive answer. Instead, it creates conditions for intentional reflection. 

The exhibition was developed through 421’s Artistic Development Program (ADP), which supports emerging artists in the UAE to expand their practice, experiment with new approaches, and develop ambitious new bodies of work towards their first institutional solo exhibition.

Archipelago of Whispers
Archipelago of Whispers explores alternative infrastructures for knowledge-making, including whispers, gossip, and storytelling. It examines how speech and silence, the felt and the known, the self and the other, can overlap and shape our understanding. Throughout the exhibition, artists explore distinct perspectives on less hierarchical forms of knowing: from whispered confessions to an endangered whale song, language games, dreams, and participatory performance.

Farah Al Qasimi's video Everybody was Invited to a Party (2018) draws on the 1980s Arabic-language version of Sesame Street, using puppetry, repetition, and linguistic slippage to unsettle language as a fixed system of meaning. Ayman Zedani's multilayered sonic installation Between Desert Seas (2021) shares recordings of Arabian Sea humpback whales, whose distinct songs open questions around culture, solitude, and more-than-human forms of communication. Across Root and Branch (2026) and Suspending belief, Suspending disbelief (2017/2026), Omar Mismar examines how speech persists, mutates, and acquires meaning, from suppressed slogans resurfacing through layers of paint to a hammock suspended between acts of hearing and saying. Gizem Karakaş's Guilty Pleasures IV (2018) disperses whispered voices across the exhibition space, shifting experiences of guilt and shame from privacy toward collective humor. Ruba Al-Sweel’s AI-narrated video-essay FIRST PHONE (2024) examines how ecological and political crises are experienced through the mediated space of digital screens. Aliaskar Abarkas’s site-responsive performance Between the Shelves (2026) transforms fragments from the Reading Room at 421 into a collective vocal score shaped through repetition, proximity, and mishearing. Yen Chun Lin extends these questions beyond human language in Amorphous Vessels: Undertide (2026) and Amorphous Vessels: Ground Current (2026), exploring interspecies communication through silence, dreams, breath, and sound. 

For press inquiries and images, contact: Rania Habib or Zara Doshi, Pelham Communications, rania@pelhamcommunications.com / zara@pelhamcommunications.com

421 Arts Campus is an independent arts platform dedicated to emerging artists and creative practitioners in the UAE and across the region. A site for research, learning, and experimentation, 421 provides a nurturing environment for emergent creative practices and those who want to harness the arts as an agent for social inquiry and transformation. 421 encourages practitioners to explore the potential of public spaces as a means for progress and community engagement through a wide-ranging programmatic model that facilitates artistic exchange and critical dialogue.