From street to gallery: Fathima Mohiuddin reimagines space in Ishara's ‘No Trespassing'

Arab News

a day ago

DUBAI: Dubai-born artist Fathima Mohiuddin, known as Fatspatrol, is one of six featured artists in 'No Trespassing,' a summer exhibition at Dubai's Ishara Art Foundation.
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The show, which runs until Aug. 30, explores boundaries — physical, cultural, and institutional — through the lens of street art aesthetics recontextualized within the gallery's white cube space.
'I'm not typically a gallery exhibiting artist,' Mohiuddin told Arab News. 'I've spent a good part of my career as an artist and curator in street art because the urban art space has just felt like a more comfortable place for me.'
Mohiuddin, who recently returned to the UAE after seven years abroad, added: 'I'm really glad to have landed right here in this show.'
Her work, titled 'The World Out There,' explores the tension between personal identity and the outside world.
'Boundaries and restrictions have been a big part of not just my work but of things I've had to navigate in my life,' she said. 'My work is very much about mark-making … to say, 'I was here, I was unique in a world that doesn't want me to be, and I mattered.''
Mohiuddin initially planned to show small-scale works on reclaimed materials such as road signs and license plates, but found her pieces 'looked really small and almost as if they were intimidated' by the space.
With curator Priyanka Mehra's encouragement, she adopted a new approach. 'I told Priyanka I wanted to bring in some texture and I'm going to paint with brooms.'
The result is a large-scale, layered installation that channels the grit and energy of the streets.
'To be able to loosen up and work freely without restriction and prerequisite was amazing. And brooms. I used brooms in my mark-making for the first time,' Mohiuddin said.
Through her personal, intuitive process, she hopes to provoke 'a raw humanness' in viewers.
'Perhaps let's say I hope it provokes a human response,' she added.