Hafez Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Art Dubai 2026 with a solo presentation by Lana Khayat (b. 1983), unveiling a new body of work from her ongoing project The Labor of Repair. Shown for the first time within a fair context, The Labor of Repair marks a decisive shift in Khayat’s practice, from paint to fiber, from surface to structure. The series transforms the act of stitching into an architectural gesture: torn, cut, or perforated grounds are sutured with dense thread, turning sites of rupture into the work’s strongest points. Khayat’s work sits at the intersection of nature, heritage, and abstraction. Moving between the colorful landscapes of Spain and the vast stillness of the Arabian desert, she draws on two geographies to develop a visual language where lilies, ancient scripts, and geometric structures coexist. The lily, central to her recent practice, functions as a double image: a botanical form and a stand‑in for the female body, carrying histories of endurance, transformation, and quiet defiance. Inspired by Tifinagh and Phoenician scripts, Khayat reinterprets ancestral signs as abstract marks and rhythms, weaving them through fields of color and stitched seams. In The Labor of Repair, these marks migrate off the purely painted surface and into a new material vocabulary: torn papers, pierced textiles, and layered grounds that bear the visible weight of mending. The scar is not concealed; it is underlined, thickened, and rendered indispensable. “I am not interested in returning things to how they were,” Khayat notes. “The repair is where the story changes. The stitched line becomes a new anatomy, evidence that something broke, was claimed, and continued.” Born into a family of artisans and calligraphers, Khayat traces her lineage to her great‑grandfather, master craftsman Mohamad Suleiman Khayat, whose restored Syrian Ajami rooms are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu. This inheritance of ornament, script, and architectural surface informs her sensitivity to material and pattern. Khayat studied Design at the American University of Beirut and earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Now based between Dubai and Spain, she has exhibited in New York, London, Riyadh, the UAE, and Spain, and has collaborated with institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, with her works entering several private collections. The Labor of Repair at Art Dubai builds on earlier series in which lilies, gardens, and calligraphy mapped women’s presence in history and myth. Here, those narratives move closer to the skin: cuts, sutures, and layered threads become diagrams of pain, care, and perseverance.

Exhibition Details Artist: Lana Khayat (The Labor of Repair) Booth: A8 Dates: VIP Preview April 15–16 | Public Days April 17–19, 2026Location: Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

High-resolution images, preview catalog, and artist statement available upon request. For press inquiries or to schedule an interview with the artist or gallery, please contact: Mouna Ben Abdeladhim Marketing and Communications Director mouna@hafezgallery.com

Heba El Moaz Artist Liaison and Senior Program Director helmoaz@hafezgallery.com

Kenza Zouari Head of Special Projects kenza@hafezgallery.com