How does creating art help with grief?
The Hard like Tears; Soft like Glass exhibition at Iris Projects in Abu Dhabi seeks to answer this question. The first solo show by Emirati multidisciplinary artist Shamsa Al Omaira since 2012 is about family, memories and the emotional architecture of domestic life.
Al Omaira’s work is deeply personal. It maps the patterns that emotions leave behind. “I always try to document certain things, whether it’s emotions, thoughts or human behaviour,” she explains. “I love creating patterns out of what we experience as humans and this is where my work is going.”
The exhibition is the result of a year-long mentorship programme with UAE-based curator and critic Nadine Khalil, supported by Iris Projects. Over that period, Al Omaira expanded her practice by adopting new materials, including resin, glass, ceramics, stitching and installation. The works on display draw from childhood bedding, heirloom objects, lullabies and food moulds, transforming sources of comfort into forms that harbour discomfort.
The exhibition has emotional trajectory, one that moves through grief, understanding and joy. “Somehow it’s intentional,” Al Omaira says. “I feel the most change that has happened to me is through my healing journey. We go through grief. We go through loss. We go through experiences and it does shape us.”
That process became unavoidable during the Covid lockdown, when she was confronted by the deaths of a brother and an uncle. “I had to face my emotions for the first time,” she says. “I started to see patterns in how we are so consumed by emotions to the point where it really affects our daily practices.”
Al Omaira is the second youngest child in a family of 10. “I had to see my brothers, my sisters, my mum and my dad ageing,” she says. “It’s not an easy experience, but it teaches you a lot.”
That awareness extends to the materials she uses. Broken heirlooms, fragments of glass and even fabric from her own clothing are embedded into the works.
“I’ve been hanging on to things for so long,” she says. “None of the things I hold on to are kept in the way they should be kept, especially the heirloom vase. It was wrapped but broken. Seeing it felt like you can’t save what you can’t save.”
Rather than discarding these remnants, Al Omaira gives them a new function. That sense of preservation is further highlighted in works that resemble desserts made from resin and glass. Inspired by cake moulds and Ramadan table-scapes, the pieces are seductive at first glance, their jewel-like colours recalling jelly and creme caramel. But closer inspection reveals sharp fragments suspended beneath the surface.
The process of making them was slow and uncertain. “The first 15 pieces were not cured properly,” says Al Omaira. “The outcome is not guaranteed at all.” She describes learning to accept failure as part of the work. “The ones on the floor are what I call my rejects. These are the ones I did not approve of.”
Those rejects remain present in the exhibition, even if they are not elevated. “Imperfections are important,” she says. “They allow you to appreciate perfection more.”
If the resin works lure viewers in, the bed installation confronts them directly. Constructed from steel and filled with glass shards, it reimagines rest as something uneasy and unresolved. “Sleep is such an important part of life, but we don’t understand how hard it can be. We go to bed wanting comfort, but do we really get it?”
The use of broken domestic glass is deliberate. “These were once beautiful objects that are now hurtful,” she explains. “They’re domestic. They have patterns and colours I relate to.”
The physical toll of making the piece mattered too. “The installation itself was the work, not just the outcome” says Al Omaira. “Feeling the pain while making it is part of the expression.”
Nearby, her cold tear series freezes moments of happiness into resin droplets placed on reflective mirrors, each corresponding to a date and time across the past year. The work builds on an earlier project that documented a year of familial mourning. Throughout the exhibition, language appears and disappears. Lullabies are stitched in reverse. Words are written and then blacked out.
For Maryam Al Falasi, founder of Iris Projects, the exhibition captures what makes Al Omaira’s work resonate so strongly. “It takes a lot of courage,” she says. “As adults, it is very hard for us to put our emotions out there with such rawness.”
Al Falasi has worked closely with the artist for over a year and sees this exhibition as a turning point. “I think she is one of the leading female artists coming out of the city, if not the leading artist,” she says. The response has been immediate. “Before today’s opening, we had already sold half of the show. You collect the works you connect with.”
Set within Iris Projects’ light-filled space in MiZa, Abu Dhabi, the exhibition resists isolation from its surroundings. For Al Falasi, that is intentional. “You’re appreciating the art, but you’re not completely detached from the outside world,” she says.
In Hard like Tears; Soft like Glass, Al Omaira does not offer resolution. Instead, she invites viewers to sit with contradiction: softness that wounds, comfort that unsettles, joy that passes too quickly. The works do not explain these tensions. They hold them, carefully, like something fragile that cannot be put back together, but still deserves to be seen.
The Hard like Tears; Soft like Glass exhibition by Shamsa Al Omaira runs to April 30 at Iris Projects in Abu Dhabi's MiZa at Port Zayed
