Sophie-Yen Bretez opens her exhibition at JD Malat Gallery Dubai

The Unsaid Remains Remembered, a solo exhibition by Paris-based emerging artist Sophie-Yen Bretez. On view at JD Malat Gallery from 1 October to 2 November, the show presents a new body of large-scale works that explore the quiet intersections of silence, memory and transformation of time.

Born in Vietnam in 1994, Bretez has emerged as a distinct voice in contemporary painting. While her earlier practice examines the female figure and its relationship to the male gaze, this exhibition shifts its focus to objects, landscapes and symbolic thresholds. 

“We can speak of the body without displaying it and that is precisely the axis of this solo show,” she explains. “The title The Unsaid Remains Remembered condenses my approach: silence, time and memory. Silence is never empty, it holds presence, remnants endure and memory lingers in objects, rituals and landscapes.”

Everyday motifs, such as a table, a knife, or a clock, are recast as symbolic markers of passage. Domestic interiors appear alongside expansive horizons, with contrasting colours, textured surfaces and shifting glazes. Bretez’s canvases hold multiple states at once, day and night, life and death, remembering and forgetting, allowing vulnerability and strength to coexist in these layered images.

Speaking about the works on display, Jean-David Malat, founder of JD Malat Gallery, notes: “Her work speaks to themes of memory and resilience that resonate deeply with a global audience, while bringing a poetic and original voice to the region’s contemporary art scene.”

Bretez begins each painting with a poem, weaving words, images and textures into a dialogue between the personal and the collective. The result is what she calls a “dramaturgy of passage”, a way of holding the unsaid.

The Unsaid Remains Remembered runs at JD Malat Gallery Dubai, Act 2 Tower, Downtown Dubai, from 1 October to 2 November 2025.