At Abu Dhabi’s Cultural Foundation, Shezad Dawood has spent months thinking about how people move.
Across the building’s atrium, balconies and corridors, Skin of Dreams unfolds in shifting perspectives. Works hang, stretch and project into space, revealing themselves differently depending on where you stand.
“I wanted the show to work from all the angles people could see it from,” Dawood says. “That you didn’t just enter, cross the atrium and leave, but that it would encourage you to explore and move around.”
The exhibition, which runs until September 20, is Dawood’s first mid-career retrospective. Curated by Jessica Cerasi, it brings together decades of work across painting, film, textiles and digital installation.
The project began with a conversation with Reem Fadda, director of culture programming at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, who suggested the artist was overdue for a survey of this scale. The Cultural Foundation quickly became central to the idea.
“It’s one of my favourite buildings in the region,” Dawood says. “It’s a synthesis of so many things that interest me. That interface between the modern and the traditional, East and West. It’s a meeting ground.”
Rather than treat the venue as a neutral backdrop, Dawood approached it as an active collaborator. The exhibition has been designed in direct response to the building’s architecture, from its triple-height atrium to its layered circulation of spaces.
“I saw it as a dialogue with the building,” he says. “Almost like a two-person exhibition, where the other artist I’m collaborating with is the building itself.”
That sense of exchange runs through Dawood’s wider practice. Over the years, he has worked across disciplines, collaborating with scientists, musicians, philosophers and writers.
One of the clearest examples of that approach is Night in the Garden of Love, a multisensory installation presented in the exhibition. The work brings together plant imagery, sound and scent in a layered environment.
Drawings of plants are translated into code and animated across seven screens, their growth driven by an AI-processed musical composition. Each screen responds to a different instrument, creating a shifting soundscape as visitors move through the space.
“I worked with botanists, coders and musicians,” Dawood says. “Each screen has a different plant growing at its own rate, driven by a different instrument.”
The installation extends beyond sound and image. A ceramic structure at its centre releases a custom fragrance developed using plant references drawn from the work, creating a space that engages multiple senses at once.
Elsewhere, the exhibition presents key works from Dawood’s long-running Leviathan Cycle film series, including the premiere of its final two episodes. Developed in collaboration with researchers, the films explore speculative futures shaped by climate change and scientific intervention.
“They’re journeys into possible futures,” Dawood says. “But futures that also connect us to the ocean and to questions about where we are going as humans.”
Episode 9, set in South Korea, examines the ethical implications of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence in preserving ecosystems. Episode 10, filmed in Karachi, returns to coastal landscapes from the artist’s childhood while imagining new environmental realities.
Across these works, Dawood’s interest in storytelling extends into structure and pattern. “Stories are a form of pattern,” he says. “And patterns are where algorithms come from.”
This connection between nature, technology and craft, is reflected in his use of textiles. Several works are created on vintage ralli quilts from Pakistan, hand-stitched materials that carry traces of domestic life.
“Technology and craft are not oppositional,” Dawood says. “They speak to each other in a much more generative way. Bringing these works together also required the artist to look back across his own practice, a process he describes as demanding.
“As artists, we’re always thinking ahead,” he says. “So, to sit down and look back over 25 years of work felt like being chained to my desk.”
Yet the process revealed a continuity he had not fully recognised. When earlier works were placed alongside new ones, the connections became clear.
“I was shocked. Something from 2010 didn’t look out of place next to what I’m making now,” he says.
That realisation has shifted how he understands his work. “You start to see the threads more clearly. Everything you’ve done continues to inform what you’re doing.”
About exhibiting in the UAE, Dawood – who has been visiting the country since childhood, when his grandfather lived in Dubai – says: “I’ve seen the UAE through many phases of its evolution. There’s something very meaningful about doing this here.”
Skin of Dreams does not resolve in a single visit. Instead, it opens out across the building, shifting with movement and perspective. “I like the idea that people can come back and find something new each time,” he says.
Skin of Dreams by Shezad Dawood is running at the Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi until September 20
