Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to present Invisible Fish, by Saif Azzuz marking his first solo exhibition in the Middle East. Opening on 17 January 2026, the exhibition brings together painting, works on paper, sculpture, and moving image, tracing an ecological and cultural history of the region prior to large-scale urban development. A Libyan–Yurok artist based in San Francisco, Azzuz approaches land and water as lived, relational systems rather than extractive resources, foregrounding marine environments, fishing practices, and water as both sustenance and connective force across geographies.
The exhibition title, Invisible Fish, is drawn from the poem of the same name by Joy Harjo, which Azzuz was reflecting on while conceiving the works in the exhibition. Harjo’s text traces cycles of transformation across land, water, and time, moving from submerged worlds to human habitation and industrial presence, which resonates with the exhibition’s focus on ecological change, ancestral memory, and the layered histories embedded within landscapes shaped by both natural forces and human intervention. The poem reads:
Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock.
Soon the fish will learn to walk.
Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone.
Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks,
carrying the dreamers’ descendants, who are going to the store.
Azzuz’s practice is informed by sustained research into the coastal landscape of the UAE, when fishing villages and maritime labour shaped everyday life and subsistence. His work reflects on these inherited relationships to water while addressing the environmental transformations brought about by rapid development. Across the exhibition, the marine ecosystem emerges not as a backdrop but as an active agent—fragile, adaptive, and deeply entangled with human activity.
Central to the presentation are the Algae Bloom paintings, in which Azzuz adopts a process-driven approach to evoke underwater environments through movement, layering, and material flow. Working wet-on-wet, he allows paint to bleed, drip, and merge, producing organic forms that feel suspended and continuously evolving. Vertical runs and interwoven marks suggest growth patterns found in marine plant life, while areas of openness create depth and circulation. Rather than literal depictions, these works function as sensory impressions of aquatic ecosystems shaped by rhythm, fragility, and transformation.
Another series of paintings draws from fish species found in and around the waters of the UAE, translating their distinctive scales into abstract, rhythmically patterned surfaces. Titled Friend of Hamour, Hamour, Chinook, and Rainbow Trout, the works move away from figuration to focus on texture, repetition, and surface memory. Enlarged scale-like forms are rendered through layered mark-making, where density and variation evoke protective skins while also recalling geological or cellular structures, positioning marine life within broader systems of natural patterning.
The installation What’s a Pedagogy? I’m Trying to Eat is composed of gargour fishing traps, drawing on a practice deeply embedded in the UAE’s maritime history. Traditionally used by local fishermen, the gargour is recontextualised here as both a functional object and a cultural marker. Beyond their role in fishing, these traps are sometimes left submerged after use, where they become sites for coral growth and marine regeneration.
Water also operates as a connective thread across geographies central to the artist’s life. In the three-channel film installation In an Invented Summer the World Breaks Apart, Azzuz brings together bodies of water from San Francisco, the Yurok Reservation along the Klamath River, and the coastal waters of Dubai. Positioned side by side and visually aligned, the scenes form a continuous horizon, collapsing geographic distance and presenting water as a unifying presence shaped by memory, movement, and lived experience.
Together, the works in Invisible Fish articulate a sustained reflection on marine environments as sites of memory, labour, and ecological interdependence. Through material experimentation and research-driven enquiry, Azzuz positions water not only as a subject but as a shared condition—one that links place, history, and the ongoing negotiation between human activity and the natural world.
