Shimmering silhouettes in pinks and creams. Wide mouths open — devouring, dreaming. Bodies lifting off the ground, colour breaking loose. This is Aliyah Alawadhi’s "Girl Parts", her solo exhibition at Bayt Al Mamzar, on view until January 4.
What first reads as brightness or emotional ease slowly reveals something more deliberate. "Girl Parts" turns toward girlhood as a bodily process — recent, unresolved, and formative. The paintings reflect on how women learn to inhabit their bodies, often through restriction, expectation, and quiet negotiation.
Aliyah’s figures eat, laugh, and comfort one another. They take up space in ways that are usually discouraged. Their gestures resist composure without turning into spectacle.
We spoke with Aliyah Alawadhi and Océane Sailly, curator and founder of Hunna Art, about the thinking behind the works and the framework of the exhibition.
