I Breathe Through the City

2026Industrial galvanised steel and flexible aluminium ducting, steel reinforcement tube, rockwool insulation, clear PVC, steel brackets, printed surface materialsDimensions variable

Shama Al Hamed’s practice explores the material and spatial systems that shape everyday urban life, transforming familiar infrastructure into sculptural forms. I Breathe Through the City (2026) brings the hidden ventilation and cooling networks that sustain life in Abu Dhabi into public view. Using flexible aluminium ventilation ducting and recycled aluminium vent panels, the installation transforms the MiZa Observation Deck into an architectural drawing that appears to inhale and exhale. By revealing systems usually concealed within the building, the work reimagines infrastructure as a shared public experience. Responding to changing light, movement, and the presence of visitors, it reflects on the unseen networks that sustain urban life and connect bodies, buildings, and the city.

Artist's Biography

Shama Al Hamed

Abu Dhabi, UAE

Shama Al Hamed is an Emirati visual artist whose practice is guided by a painter’s sensibility, extending across sculpture, installation, textile, photography, and material experimentation. Grounded in a painter’s approach to line, rhythm, colour, and pattern, her work draws on everyday moments, memories, and the subconscious to create immersive environments between lived experience and imagination. Through layered compositions, she explores perception, emotion, and the shifting relationship between inner and outer worlds. Her exhibitions include I Draw with Ducts, Abu Dhabi National Theatre (2025); I Jump – Will I Stick the Landing?, Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Dubai (2025); Fruit Salad, NYC Crit Club, New York (2025); and Qudwa, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi (2024). Al Hamed earned a BFA from Zayed University, Abu Dhabi (2022). She participated in the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (2023) and 421 Arts Campus residency (2024), and received the UAE Ministry of Culture National Grant Program for Culture and Creativity (2025).

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