NASO Contributors: Still Unraveling by Hafsa AlKhudairi
“In a way, she found a medium to present her nuanced concepts. The experience that produced the work was hard to decipher, and she wanted to express that complicated feeling. However, as time progressed, the solidity of her works from the 2018 solo slowly unwound, and we are looking at a new era of controlled chaos. Her 2025 solo presents the feeling of letting the world flow through her and her practice.”
A ritual for any visit to Alserkal Avenue is to start from Cinema Akil and explore every gallery row by row until it is complete. As usual, no matter the artist's quality, not every gallery has a show that stops one's heart and impresses one's senses. Expectantly, Huda Lutfi’s show “Unraveling” at The Third Line left a lasting impression.
The exhibition experience was an entry point into Huda Lutfi’s thought process. She collects found objects and gives them new life with stories of her own perspective and narrative. Tea bags, dolls, laundry/air conditioner filters, frames, collages, etc., are all present to allow a variety of expressions. Each piece gives the viewer an insight into her practice. Lutfi expressed in a one-on-one interview in August 2024 that she would walk around her city and find items to express her truth. “I got to know Cairo through my artworks.” She learnt her city thoroughly and intimately, reflecting the complex story of a place with its objects, and her city allowed her to showcase an alternate history of being to the world.
As many historians and art practitioners have noted in the past, Huda Lutfi’s work does not accept an apparent dichotomy but exists in contrast and thrives on dualities. Her 2018 solo “Still” is an excellent example of her abstractism, using shapes, paper, and string to conceive her existence into an expression of self or lack thereof. The exhibition had a lot of beautiful artworks, yet the only one that truly felt like her is the Difficult to Unravel, 2018 piece, which feels like a prelude to the new 2025 show “Unraveling”. The artwork is an installation made out of multiple threads immobilized by a silver coat, making it not just literally difficult to pick apart but almost impossible. According to Lutfi, the work directly responds to her environment: “I want to speak about life, about topics that are difficult to unravel by using material that is made to ravel to be used”. In a way, she found a medium to present her nuanced concepts. The experience that produced the work was hard to decipher, and she wanted to express that complicated feeling. However, as time progressed, the solidity of her works from the 2018 solo slowly unwound, and we are looking at a new era of controlled chaos. Her 2025 solo presents the feeling of letting the world flow through her and her practice.
The works included in the show are either preludes or continuations of her series When Dreams Call for Silence, 2019, Our Black Thread, 2020 – 2021, and Healing Devices, 2020—ongoing. The pieces are not surprising on their own; however, they tell a story of how Lutfi has been experimenting since 2019. The works show a real leap into (or return to) the world of displaying a variety of painful and relieving exercises physically, emotionally, and mentally
Although all the pieces are impactful, the showstopper from both solos is The Seven-Legged Demon of the Night, 2025. Watching the artist interview her mom and document her phantom sewing is both extremely intimate and slightly intimidating. Su’ad Hanim ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Wali, a seamstress, is the film's star. She was showing her daughter the way she worked. Her hand movements are ongoing as if she is truly weaving and creating a beautiful piece before our eyes. The visualization of the artwork shows how much repetition affects our bodies, so that it remembers automatically without any triggers. Lutfi said, “I love the idea of repetition, I think it slows my mind”. It may allow her to focus and be more present mentally, but the video showed repetition as a form of connection and grounding. The feeling emanating from the piece is that both the artist and her mother needed this act of repetition to be in each other’s presence so peacefully and with love.
What I enjoy about the Third Line’s exhibitions is the extra fun little adventure they include on the second floor of their building. This time, they included one of Lutfi’s classic pieces: Umm Kulthum as the Statue of Liberty standing on one foot. A collage work that is both cheeky as a pop culture reference connecting the western and eastern world, and a political commentary as a possible reference to immigration and the existence of a third culture connection, reminding us again of who the artist is and what her practice is truly about: commentary.