Mashael Alsaie Bahraini, b. 1994

Her work begins with the investigation of water bodies as sites of ideological excavation, tracing how the Gulf’s shifting ecologies hold narratives of extraction, disappearance, and renewal. Working across photography, sculpture, and installation, Alsaie draws on industrial and scientific methodologies such as copper patination, tin welding, expired film, and ultrasound imaging to consider how bodies and landscapes inform one another. Rather than documenting sites, she reconstitutes them, transforming residues of erosion, contamination, and agricultural decline into sensorial topographies of remembrance.

Her debut solo exhibition Gentle Porosities (Hunna Art, 2024) layered photographic prints of Bahrain’s farmlands and industrial zones with copper and tin, allowing each surface to carry its own temporal and geological memory. Alsaie has exhibited internationally at Kunstmuseum Basel, Warehouse421, Misk Art Institute, Noor Riyadh, and PS122. She received her MA in Photography, Moving Image, and Visual Culture from New York University’s Gallatin School (2023) and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2016). Residencies include the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship (Abu Dhabi, 2021), Elsur Residency (Mexico City, 2022), and Misk Microresidency (Riyadh, 2025).