Frieze Abu Dhabi

For the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi, NIKA Project Space brings together works by Adel Abidin, Rajni Perera, Nika Neelova, and Mirna Bamieh, whose practices consider the body as a site of historical, psychological, and material inscription. Across painting, sculpture, and drawing, the booth unfolds through shifting relations between figuration and abstraction, interiority and monumentality. Perera’s newly commissioned paintings (on the sketch you can see the examples chosen by the artist; the topics and dimensions will remain largely the same) propose hybrid mythologies shaped by diasporic consciousness, while Neelova’s sculptural forms evoke architectures suspended between ruin and renewal. Abidin’s works introduce a psychological and political register, tracing the emotional residue of displacement and fractured belonging.

The presentation will comprise newly commissioned paintings by Rajni Perera, new body of work on paper by Mirna Banieh, a sculptural intervention by Nika Neelova, and selected paintings and works on paper by Adel Abidin. Perera’s large-scale works will anchor the booth visually and symbolically, while Neelova’s sculpture activates the architecture of the stand and guides movement through it. Abidin’s works will create quieter moments of psychological intimacy within the spatial composition. The booth will maintain a restrained architectural language with white walls, focused lighting, and minimal interventions emphasizing material presence and spatial tension.