Sarah Al Mehairi: I Construct What I Want to Disrupt: Misaligned Enjambements at The Arts Club Dubai

If you’re looking for an art gallery to wander this May, Emirati artist and poet Sarah Al Mehairi offers a compelling reason to visit The Arts Club Dubai. In her latest solo exhibition, she brings a quiet intensity and structural clarity to the club’s soaring six-metre walls, transforming the space into a site of poetic and spatial exploration.

I Construct What I Want to Disrupt: Misaligned Enjambements is a meditation on form, space, and the poetics of disruption—where precision meets intuition, and language finds its place in geometry.

Best known for her sculptural minimalism and thoughtful use of repetition, Al Mehairi presents three large-scale works, each measuring 350 x 200 cm, alongside a smaller piece just 45 x 30 cm. The dramatic shift in scale invites viewers to reconsider how size shapes perception, prompting a fresh encounter with space and form.

Responding directly to the club’s interiors, Al Mehairi even incorporates the deep maroon of the venue’s wallpaper into her compositions. Her restrained use of colour—muted blacks, beiges, whites, and reds—allows the work to quietly reflect its surroundings, while still holding its own space.

This conversation between artwork and architecture continues through her use of positive and negative space. Cut-out sections in the canvas expose the wall behind, allowing the work to physically and visually absorb the environment. As one piece opens up, another closes in—a rhythmic interplay of presence and absence that pulses throughout the exhibition.

While Al Mehairi’s practice has moved toward a more structured approach, using digital sketches that now closely resemble the final works—she still leaves room for the unexpected. Her process remains grounded in careful planning but never loses its openness to chance.

The exhibition’s title borrows from enjambment, a poetic device where meaning spills over from one line to the next. It’s an apt metaphor: here, forms extend beyond conventional boundaries, asking us to look again at the spaces in between.

This is Al Mehairi at her most refined—materially precise, intellectually layered, and spatially attuned. Visitors can view the exhibition by appointment. Non-members are welcome to book by emailing rsvp@theartsclub.ae

Presented with the support of regional gallery Carbon 12. Visit: theartsclub.ae