Issue #74 Being Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim

There is a particular kind of joy that lives inside the work of Mohamad Ahmad Ibrahim. It is bright, playful, unapologetically naïve, and deeply intelligent. His colours feel as though they were chosen by a child who never agreed to grow quiet. His shapes repeat, insist, and dance. Behind this apparent simplicity lies a lifetime of looking,
surviving, and believing in art when almost nothing around him encouraged it.
Ibrahim is no ordinary artist. And he did not emerge from an ordinary environment.

When he began his journey, there was no established art infrastructure in the UAE, nor in the wider region. No clear paths or validation. What existed instead was conviction. Alongside what would later be known as the “Five,” a group of contemporary artists he worked closely with, he helped form a community when community itself still had to be imagined. Together, they navigated the emotional terrain familiar to every artist: doubt, isolation, persistence, and hope, without precedents to guide them. Today, that same environment not only accepts
Ibrahim; it celebrates him.

In recent years, Mohamad Ahmad Ibrahim has continued to shape the narrative of contemporary Emirati art on an international scale. In 2020, he created Falling Stones Garden, a site-specific installation of 320 brightly coloured, stone-like forms for Desert X AlUla, inviting viewers to reconsider the desert landscape with renewed attentiveness. In 2022, he represented the UAE at the 59th Venice Biennale with Between Sunrise and Sunset, a sculptural installation where light, form, and memory converged. In 2024, several of his works entered the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, marking significant institutional recognition of his contribution to contemporary art. Most recently, his solo exhibition Two Clouds in the Night Sky (2025–2026) at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi offered a poetic and immersive reflection on colour, repetition, and nature, reaffirming his enduring influence on the UAE art scene.

This monograph is both a celebration of an artist’s career and a portrait of endurance, curiosity, and joy. To enter Ibrahim’s world is to remember that art does not need to be loud to be radical, nor complex to be profound. Sometimes, happiness itself is the bravest gesture. We are deeply honoured to have worked so closely with Mohamad Ahmad Ibrahim for this issue. It would not have been possible without the generosity of Kaph Books in providing archival material, nor without Mohamad himself, his family,
and of course, the cat. Above all, we thank the artist who reminds us that repetition can be freedom, colour can be memory, and joy can be a lifelong discipline.