We Walk on Stories | 13 February - 28 May 2026

PRESS RELEASE

Firetti Contemporary presents We Walk on Stories, curated by Lina Mikati, opening to the public on 14 February 2026 at Firetti Contemporary. The exhibition brings together works from Khozema Al-Aaed’s ongoing Cities series, examining how land registers human presence over time and how place is shaped by movement, memory, and lived experience rather than fixed geography.

Al-Aaed’s practice engages with mapping as both a visual system and a cultural construct. Rather than treating maps as neutral tools of orientation, his works question what is lost when experience is reduced to borders, routes, and labels. Through abstract cartographies, the artist shifts focus from direction to remembrance, allowing memory, absence, and emotion to surface.

Born and raised in Syria, Al-Aaed developed his artistic language within a landscape marked by conflict, displacement, and continual transformation. Years of working amid fractured urban environments informed his sensitivity to how cities absorb human experience beyond visible destruction. Rather than depicting specific events or sites, his work engages with the quieter aftermath of change, where histories linger beneath the surface.

The Cities series unfolds as an evolving visual archive. Conventional markers such as names, borders, and fixed routes are removed, allowing lines to suggest interrupted paths and moments of decision, while open spaces register erasure and absence. These are not maps designed to guide movement, but compositions that hold traces of lived experience.

Materiality plays a central role in Al-Aaed’s practice. Constructed from iron, stone, clay, wood, and pigment, the works carry both physical and symbolic weight. Their surfaces appear fractured yet resilient, bearing marks of pressure, erosion, and time. The materials reference both urban infrastructure and natural elements, reinforcing the sense that these landscapes have been shaped by lived experience rather than design.

Rooted in experiences familiar to the Arab diaspora, We Walk on Stories reflects a broader condition shaped by migration, mobility, and shifting notions of home. The exhibition speaks to lives lived between places, cultures, and identities, where belonging is carried rather than fixed.

As described by curator Lina Mikati, this dimension of the work is also deeply personal. Coming from the same country and shaped by experiences of war and rupture, she encountered Al-Aaed’s Cities series through an immediate and instinctive recognition. These works do not describe displacement; they carry it within them, transforming maps into emotional terrains shaped by memory, loss, and the quiet persistence of belonging.

Through these reimagined maps, Al-Aaed transforms the language of mapping into a universal vocabulary, one that resonates beyond Syria to address broader questions of migration, belonging, and how land continues to remember those who walk upon it.

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We Walk on Stories : by Khozema Alaaed | Firetti Contemporary, Dubai

PRESS RELEASE

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