The Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Abu Dhabi is pleased to announce a two-person exhibition of works by internationally acclaimed artists Cristiana de Marchi and Mohammed Kazem in “A Visual Unison” opening October 3rd, 2025.
Emirati Mohammed Kazem and Cristiana de Marchi, a UAE long-term resident, have been collaborating since 2008, when they were both part of “The Flying House,” a referential and now revered collective of conceptual artists gathering around the late Hassan Sharif. They further developed their partnership when, in 2011, they opened their studio, named “Empty10,” one of the first artistic realities in Dubai’s neighbourhood of Al Quoz, currently considered the epicentre of the UAE commercial art scene.
Opening: October 3, 6:30pm
Venue: Italian Cultural Institute Abu Dhabi
RSVP: https://avisualunison.splashthat.com
The exhibition will give prominence to a selection of works characterised by an internal tight conversation, thus engaging the viewers in a mirrored experience. Featuring paperworks, video and textiles, the exhibition introduces the daily exercise of two artists who cultivate their individual practice while entertaining a dialogue that translates through visual connections, correspondences, and affinities. Although thematically unrelated, the works are informed by a shared research into conceptual abstraction and evocatively resonate with one another.
The exhibition, which will be open to the public through October 21th, constitutes the inaugural edition of a new initiative promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute, aiming at bridging cultures via creativity, and will coincide with the Italian Day of Contemporary Art, celebrated on October 4th, a programme developed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with AMACI, the Association of Italian Museums of Contemporary Art.
Mohammed Kazem (b. Dubai, UAE) lives and works in Dubai. He has developed an artistic practice that encompasses video, photography and performance to find new ways of apprehending his environment and experiences. The foundations of his work are informed by his training as a musician, and Kazem is deeply engaged with developing processes that can render transient phenomena, such as sound and light, in tangible terms. Often positioning himself within his work, Kazem responds to geographical location, materiality and the elements as a means to assert his subjectivity, particularly in relation to the rapid pace of modernization in the Emirates since the country’s founding.
Cristiana de Marchi (b. Italy, IT/LB) lives and works in Beirut and Dubai. Her practice explores social and political terrains, from memory, places of the past and present, identity and contested borders to the paraphernalia of contemporary nationhood. Using textiles, embroidery, film and performance, she instigates processes that draw attention to currencies of power by exploring their structures. These systems are interrogated by extracting the signs and symbols that constitute them. She lays bare the power latent in flags and their colours, passports, maps, statistics, sociological models, words and letters. Focusing on often-overlooked details, attention is called to how the apparently innocuous every-day are the essence of larger structuring schemes.