About face: Ahmad Tallaa stores data of life on face at Firetti Contemporary

Firetti Contemporary in Dubai is hosting "The Living Archive," a major solo exhibition by Syrian artist Ahmad Tallaa, running from September 21 to November 11. The exhibition offers the most extensive presentation to date of Tallaa's diverse practice, featuring large-scale portraits, sculptures, a tile installation, works on paper, and artist books.

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There is a particular kind of knowledge that cannot be spoken, only carried. It lives not in language alone, but in the body. It is seen in the way a person holds their shoulders, in the lines that deepen around the eyes, in the gestures that return long after the circumstances that shaped them have passed. This is the knowledge Tallaa’s work is concerned with: not the record of what happened, but the residue of how it survived.

Curator Celine Azem explains that Tallaa's work delves into a form of knowledge that is embodied rather than spoken, residing in the physical presence and enduring traces of human experience. "The Living Archive" posits the face as a site where lived experiences leave their mark, prompting questions about what time leaves behind and how these traces are carried forward. Tallaa views the archive not as a static record but as a living entity, constantly transformed by the bodies and materials that bear it.

The exhibition begins with Tallaa's artist books, handmade objects using recycled materials, raw canvas, pigment, and gesture. These works, displayed openly, function as a conceptual foundation, existing between notebooks, diaries, and experimental records, revealing a process of observation and revision. Alongside these are smaller studies on paper that convey messages at varying speeds and scales.

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a trace of human experiences, a document, and a witness to a specific time.

The centerpiece of the exhibition comprises large-scale portraits that depart from conventional portraiture. Instead of capturing likeness or fixed psychology, Tallaa uses the face as "a trace of human experiences, a document, and a witness to a specific time." Constructed from layers of sand collected in the UAE, chalk powder, pigments, glue, and acrylic, these works are dense and sculptural. Faces appear excavated, with features surfacing and dissolving, reflecting the artist's engagement with memory, experience, and his current environment in the UAE, materializing the past and present simultaneously.

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neither a victim nor a survivor, but as a witness.