Gulf News ran this feature by Tessy Koshy on 4 July 2023, covering the same DIFC opening as The National's report: Almaha Jaralla's solo exhibition Seham at Tabari Artspace, on view through September 2023. Koshy frames the show around a specific discovery, a family photo album from the 1980s that Jaralla found, shot by her grandaunt Seham on a Fujifilm camera.
The article describes paintings including Old Corniche and Al Shelaylah, along with a canvas built around the Al Maqta Bridge, completed in 1968 to connect Abu Dhabi island to the mainland. Some works incorporate mawaaz, traditional Yemeni garments, stitched or referenced within the paintings. The gallery was staged as an 1980s Emirati living room, with a majlis and sepia-toned prints from the album displayed beside the mixed-media canvases. Koshy notes Jaralla holds a BFA in visual arts from Zayed University, and quotes her on her own relationship to the period: "When I was born, Abu Dhabi was already a bustling city."
Read alongside The National's coverage, this piece adds the detail of Seham's own camera and the mawaaz garments to the picture of how Almaha Jaralla worked from her grandaunt's 1980s archive. It points to the same exhibition, Seham, as the clearest place to see the finished paintings.
