TRACES OF HOME : By Salmah Almansoori & Marilina Marchica | Italian Cultural Institute, Abu Dhabi

The Italian Cultural Institute in Abu Dhabi, in collaboration with Firetti Contemporary, presents Traces of Home, an exhibition bringing together Italian artist Marilina Marchica and Emirati artist Salmah Almansoori, on view from 17 to 29 November 2026. Curated by Mara Firetti, the exhibition places the landscapes of Sicily and Ghayathi in dialogue, exploring how memory and belonging endure as the places that shape us are transformed.

Home is often imagined as somewhere to which we can return. Yet buildings disappear, familiar environments change, and the places we remember may no longer resemble those we encounter. Traces of Home considers how artists preserve these evolving relationships through materials, images and fragments drawn from their surroundings.

For Marchica, this enquiry begins with the landscape of Sicily and an intimate relationship with ruins and abandoned domestic spaces. Her research encompasses buildings connected to her family history, as well as sites such as Poggioreale, which was devastated by the 1968 Belice earthquake. Through drawing, frottage, collage, décollage, silicone casting and painting, she isolates the imprints of walls, traces of wallpaper and architectural fragments. Pigments, mineral oxides, charcoal and earth connect her work materially to these environments, while lines, horizons and empty spaces register what has disappeared.

Almansoori’s practice is rooted in Ghayathi, in Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra region, where she was born and raised. Walking and close observation form the basis of an evolving personal archive of buildings, surfaces and objects. Photographs and collected materials are reinterpreted through memory and experimentation across painting, sculpture, ceramics and installation. Her recent handmade papers incorporate palm fibres, desert grasses, recycled paper and discarded fabrics gathered in Ghayathi, carrying the physical substance of the landscape into the work alongside its remembered images.

The exhibition brings together two distinct approaches to landscape and memory. While Marchica distils places into elemental traces, Almansoori gathers and reconstructs their fragments. Both explore how what remains can preserve a connection to places transformed by time, making art an act of care for the histories they hold.