Traces of Home brings together Italian artist Marilina Marchica and Emirati artist Salmah Almansoori in a dialogue between two distinct geographies: Sicily and Ghayathi in Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra region.
Curated by Mara Firetti, the exhibition will be presented at the Italian Cultural Institute in Abu Dhabi from 17 November to 1 December 2026.
The exhibition explores how landscapes, architecture, objects, and materials can carry traces of memory and belonging, even as places transform, disappear, or are reshaped over time.
Marchica’s practice draws from the architecture, ruins, and abandoned spaces of Sicily, using fragments, surfaces, and material traces to reflect on absence, erosion, and the passage of time. Almansoori’s work is rooted in her connection to Ghayathi, where she observes changing landscapes, vernacular architecture, and familiar objects, transforming collected materials and handmade paper into personal and cultural archives.
While their approaches differ one moving through subtraction and fragmentation, the other through accumulation and reconstruction both artists consider how material can preserve connections to place. Their works ask how landscapes continue to inhabit us after their physical forms have changed, and how memory can become a way of carrying a place forward.
Traces of Home allows two territories and two artistic languages to meet through a shared meditation on what remains, what disappears, and what we continue to carry with us.
