(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

At first glance, the title Self-portrait with a cat I don't have may seem whimsical and surrealistic. Yet, for those who are familiar with Syrian-French artist Bady Dalloul's work, this playful nomenclature conceals deeper questions.

Currently on view at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, the exhibition marks Dalloul's first institutional solo exhibition in the UAE, a significant milestone in a practice defined by its intimate scale and global scope. Known for his meticulous craftsmanship and layered narratives, Dalloul's work moves fluidly between the personal and the political, often blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction to reflect on identity, memory, and migration.

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The exhibition forms the second chapter of his ongoing Land of Dreams series, following its debut at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2025) and preceding its next iteration in Lisbon. For Dubai, Dalloul has reimagined his own living and working space - transforming the gallery into a domestic installation that mirrors his apartment in the city. Within this immersive setting, viewers encounter a constellation of drawings, matchbox dioramas, vintage game cases, and repurposed everyday objects, each offering quiet meditations on displacement, belonging and cultural inheritance.

With past exhibitions at Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2022), and Darat al Funun, Amman (2019), Dalloul continues to expand his thoughtful, highly distinctive body of work.

The cat in question

“The title was inspired by a painting I saw on the cover of the French edition of The Blue Light by Hussein Barghouti,” Dalloul explains.“It was a surrealist portrait by the Egyptian artist Abdel Hadi Al Gazzar.” The novel, which follows a Palestinian emigrant navigating the strangeness of a small US West Coast town, echoed Dalloul's own experience migrating to Tokyo. Both men, he notes,“walking at night, reflecting on their presence in a foreign land”.

That first self-portrait, created alone in his Tokyo apartment, became a point of departure.“It was the first one I ever made. The cat didn't exist, but the feeling did. That imagined presence gave me comfort. It gave me company.”

Dalloul's practice has long explored the intersection between intimate recollection and collective memory.“You often learn about history from books or television,” he says.“But I grew up listening to the people around me. Their stories were shaped by subjectivity - by emotion, memory, silence. That subjectivity is where their power lies.”

In Self-portrait with a cat I don't have, this balance plays out through hundreds of intricate drawings, matchboxes, game cases, and personal items - each functioning as a miniature stage for a much larger story.

Mapping connections

Among the exhibition's new works is Age of Empires, a series of 50 drawings inspired by onmyōdō, a 19th-century Japanese cosmology manual that assigns fate based on physical traits.“It fascinated me,” Dalloul says,“that destiny could be tied to the curve of an eyelid or the width of a forehead. I began to link those ideas to the rise and fall of empires - the British, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese.”

The result is a kaleidoscopic journey through time and power. Language, iconography, and references from across continents mingle in ways that challenge the linearity of Western historiography.“My goal wasn't to point fingers,” he clarifies,“but to map connections, to show how intertwined these legacies are.”

The modest scale of Dalloul's work is not just aesthetic, it's logistical.“I live where I work,” he says.“If my work is too big, it doesn't fit in my life.” This physical constraint becomes a poetic strategy. Matchboxes become miniature galleries. Bento boxes, with their tidy compartments, become vessels for narrative.“Games, especially, are recurring motifs,” he adds.“They're metaphors for success, failure, risk. They remind me of childhood and of my brother Jad - our game of imagining ourselves as kings of fictional lands.”

Inside Jameel Arts Centre, a recreation of Dalloul's Dubai apartment brings viewers into his world. The installation is both home and studio, archive and diary.“It's important for me that people feel the intimacy - like they've walked into someone's room, not just a gallery.”

The new age nomad

Born in Paris to Syrian parents, educated and exhibited in Tokyo, Doha, Amman, and now based in Dubai, Dalloul is no stranger to displacement. Yet, he views his migratory life not as rootlessness, but rebirth.“Each new city gives me a blank page,” he says.“But with every story I choose to share, I also carry a responsibility. These are not just my stories, they belong to the people who lived them, trusted me with them.”

This sensitivity to cultural nuance also shapes how Dalloul presents his work in different places. In Tokyo, the exhibition reconstructed his apartment to contextualise his drawings. In Dubai, it has expanded-new works created in the city join earlier ones, mapping a lived experience that is always evolving. The next chapter, in Lisbon, promises further transformation.

Dalloul's materials, including scraps, boxes, fragments and knick knacks, may be humble, but the narratives they hold are anything but that.“I see heroes every day,” he says.“In the taxi drivers sending money home. In the parents raising children while working impossible hours. My role, maybe, is to translate those quiet miracles into something visible.”

The response from viewers has been deeply personal.“People have cried. They've told me I've drawn something they've never said out loud. That matters to me more than critical acclaim.”

Critical responses

But Dalloul's approach hasn't been without critique.“Someone once told me I romanticised trauma like war, migration, displacement.” He doesn't dismiss the criticism.“It's a fair question. But my answer is that I'm not a documentarian. Fiction allows for humour, tenderness and dialogue. The world is already harsh. I don't want to make it harsher. I want to open up space for empathy.”

After nearly three years in Dubai, Dalloul speaks warmly of its cultural landscape.“What I see here is a place where everyone, no matter where they're from, can flourish. There's a rich history, rooted in pioneering stories. That gives me hope that if I work sincerely, my voice can find a place here too.”

And his work, gentle yet piercing, intimate yet political, does just that. Self-portrait with a cat I don't have is more than a show; it's a quiet revolution in how we think about belonging, history, and the power of small things.

Self-portrait with a cat I don't have is on view at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, from September 20, 2025 to February 22, 2026

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