Huda Lutfi: Unraveling
The Third Line, Dubai
15 April – 27 May 2025
Missing Shoe, 2018
Mixed media on paper, 70 x 50 cm
© Huda Lutfi, courtesy The Third Line
The Third Line presents Unraveling, Huda Lutfi’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Bringing together works from three of her recent series—When Dreams Call for Silence (2019), Our Black Thread (2020–2021), and Healing Devices (2020-ongoing)—the exhibition traces the deepening introspective qualities of Lutfi’s practice over the recent years. Unraveling also features a selection of previously unshown miniature collages that precede Healing Devices, offering insight into Lutfi’s artistic experimentations that culminated in these sculptural abstractions. The exhibition includes a new video work, The Seven-legged Demon of the Night (2025), made in memory of Lutfi’s mother, whose lifelong work as a seamstress inspired the artist’s practice centered on thread and fabric.
Owing to her background as a cultural historian, Lutfi’s work has long engaged with the sociopolitical currents of her surroundings, particularly her longtime home, Cairo. In her earlier works, human figures—often fragmented, dismembered, or punctured through her signature collage technique—serve as both reactions to and reflections on the crises that unfolded during moments of political unrest in Egypt. In her series When Dreams Call for Silence (2019), the human figure remains but is now set within surreal domestic scenes or immersed in poignant silence, marking a shift in Lutfi’s practice toward stillness and introspection, as described by writer and curator Sara El-Adl.
This contemplative direction deepens in Healing Devices (2020-ongoing), where Lutfi moves toward assemblages of organic and geometric paper cutouts carefully arranged against delicate silver or gold backgrounds. The series is inspired by Ismail al-Jazari, a 12th century Arab designer and polymath, whose manuscript, The Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (1206), contains over 100 illustrations. Initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic—a period of global uncertainty and isolation—Healing Devices embodies a sense of quiet resilience, healing, and spiritual reflection. Complementing this body of work, the exhibition also presents a selection of previously unseen miniature collages—spontaneous experimentations with form that preceded the Healing Devices series. These compositions offer a glimpse into the intuitive, exploratory process that became the foundation for the series.
In the Our Black Thread (2020-21) series, Huda Lutfi further leans into the act of making as a healing practice. What began as a casual exercise at home—improvising with thread on used teabags and car-filters—evolved into a fully-fledged practice rooted in materiality, intuition, and ritual. Utilizing the mobility afforded by the medium’s lightness, Huda Lutfi sewed both at home and in her studio, creating a multitude of minimalist compositions with a restrained palette of black, white, gray, and off-white. The works not only amplify the introspective meditation that fueled their making but also evoke the historical association of craftsmanship as feminine labor and its complex relationship to art.
Gallery Two presents The Seven-legged Demon of the Night (2025), a new video made in memory of Huda Lutfi’s mother, Su’ad Hanim ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Wali, who was a seamstress. The work captures Su’ad’s hands during a period of her illness, engaged in the miming of sewing and cutting. Interwoven with texts reflecting on her mother’s relationship with sewing, the video invites contemplation on what sewing signifies to a female body, its ties to memory and healing, as well as kinship.
Collectively, the works in Unraveling offer a compelling portrait of Huda Lutfi, whose embodied, deeply meditative practice remains ever relevant in a world increasingly grappling with political strife and violence. In the words of Huda Lutfi: “Art is a healing practice. You forget yourself—the burden of the ego, as well as its anxieties and desires—when you immerse yourself in a work of art.”
Artist Huda Lutfi
Cultural historian Huda Lutfi is a self-taught artist. An Associate Professor at the American University, Cairo, Lutfi holds a PhD in Islamic Culture and History. Her artistic practice is closely aligned with her research, both of which reflect upon history and traditions as they exist in the contemporary world. In considering the present-day interpretations and misinterpretations of the past, Lutfi investigates the human psyche as it relates to remembrance. Her practice has always been in conversation with a larger political context, incorporating strong elements of popular culture, political insignia, and a play on slogans and language. The human figure has also been an essential part of her language. In the recent years, her works have taken a more self-reflexive and inward turn.
Selected solo exhibitions include Healing Devices, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA (2021); Our Black Thread, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo, Egypt (2021); When Dreams Call for Silence, The American University in Cairo, Tahrir Cultural Center, Cairo, Egypt (2019); Still, The Third Line, Dubai, UAE (2018); Magnetic Bodies: Imaging the Urban, The Third Line, Dubai, UAE (2016); Cut and Paste, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt (2013).
Selected group exhibitions include: Imagine Climate Dignity, Kunstlerhaus Wien, Vienna, Austria (2025); The Circle Was a Point, Foundry Downtown, Dubai, UAE (2024); Being and Belonging, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (2023); Islamic Arts Biennale, Jeddah, KSA (2023); Women Defining Women In Contemporary Art Of The Middle East And Beyond, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA (2023); History Leads to Twisted Mountains, ARD for Art, Cairo, Egypt (2022); Reflections on contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa, The British Museum, London, UK (2021); There Is Fiction In The Space Between, The Third Line, Dubai, UAE (2020); Occupational Hazards, Apexarts, New York, USA (2019); Tell me the Story of all These Things, Villa Vassilieff, Paris, France (2017); The Turn: Art Practices in Post-Spring Societies, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, Austria (2016); La Bienal del Sur, Caracas, Venezuela (2015); Terms & Conditions, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2013); and My World Images, Festival For Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (2010) to mention only a few.
THE THIRD LINE
Alserkal Avenue, Warehouse 78, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE
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