For issue 115, "On The Wild Side", Canvas profiled the Emirati artist Zeinab AlHashemi, tracing how a severe car accident in 2009 - thirteen fractures, eleven operations and a hip replacement - pushed her toward the monumental, site-specific installations she began making between 2009 and 2014.
The piece runs through a decade of her material-led practice: "Metamorphic" (2018, metal mesh and glass), shown in Louvre Abu Dhabi's CoLab exhibition; "Camouflage 2.0" (2022, camel hide and steel) at Desert X AlUla; and "Camouflage 1.618: The Unfinished Obelisk" (2022, camel hide and metal) at Art D'Égypte, staged by the Pyramids of Giza. It also notes "There May Exist" at Vienna's Theseus Temple and her participation in Sharjah Biennial 11 in 2013.
Canvas describes AlHashemi drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and on the UAE's own transformation since the discovery of oil, working in building materials, steel, concrete and camel hide to set geometry against nature's persistence. She studied visual art with a focus on multimedia design at Zayed University, was shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize in 2022, and cites her relative, the pioneering Emirati artist Dr Najat Makki, as an early influence.
