Aeons- New works by Nourhan Rahhal

- Thursday 3 September, 2026 09:00PM

VENUE

1971-Design Space, Flag Island

Aeons unfolds as a spatial reflection on time, tracing the act of making across six interconnected zones that move through different states of material, labour, and transformation. Anchored by the archaeological landscape of Faya in Sharjah, the exhibition begins from one of the earliest known sites of human toolmaking in the region, where the gesture of making first emerges as both necessity and instinct. From this point of departure, designer and maker Nourhan Rahhal follows making as a continuous human impulse, one that persists across shifting environments, techniques, and ways of life.

Bringing these temporal layers into the space of 1971 – Design Space, the exhibition holds past and present in close proximity. Archaeological memory, craft traditions, and contemporary design practices intersect within an environment shaped through material research and hands-on experimentation. Across the exhibition, processes of shaping, carving, weaving, casting, constructing, and assembling unfold not as isolated techniques, but as part of an evolving relationship between the human hand and the material world.

The exhibition is structured through a series of suspended forms that move across the space, touching floor, walls, and ceiling, guiding a gradual movement from grounded beginnings to elevated states. Each zone reflects a transformation: from raw material to crafted object, from survival to exchange, from utility to reflection. Together, they reveal making not as a fixed historical moment, but as a condition that continues to evolve through repetition, adaptation, and imagination.

Light, sound, scent, and texture are integral to the experience of the exhibition. Rather than functioning as additions, they shape the way the work is encountered, constructing an environment where time is sensed through the body rather than understood as a linear sequence.

Aeons does not present history as something complete or distant. Instead, it reveals it as something ongoing, carried forward through material, gesture, and form.