In this exhibition entitled Towards Time, Dubai-based Pakistani artist Zara Mahmood showcases her first institutional solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates. The show encapsulates works made in the past decade in which the artist’s investigation of the parameters of drawing are brought into focus.

Towards Time introduces Zara Mahmood’s practice with the series Composite (2013 -2014), belonging to a period that marks her preoccupation with overlooked objects and forms that allude to the human body, harking back to a subject matter that was at the centre of the artist’s formal training in drawing from the National College of Arts in Lahore. These acrylic drawings on paper are followed by a new body of work that signifies a shift in Mahmood’s practice, yet is an extension of studying the ordinary in the form of overlooked occurrences, by capturing the quotidian in motion and its fleeting nature through recording natural light and its ephemeral manifestations on different surfaces.

Mahmood showcases a series of visuals, accentuating notions of what was, is and becomes. The images evoke parallels to the rituals and routines that constitute life on a daily basis; that leave no physical residue, impressions or marks. Using different forms of printing techniques on fragile surfaces that are prone to disintegration, Mahmood’s visual language has grown to embody modes of mark making born from videos stills of transient moments.

The exhibition traces the journey of the weight of delineation in the artist’s practice, where both mark and surface become increasingly susceptible to the passage of time.