Hafez Gallery is pleased to present Suspended Presence, a solo exhibition by Saudi visual artist Donia Alshetairy (b. 1983), on view from 24 February to 1 April 2026 in the historic district of Al Balad, Jeddah.

With a background in information technology and systems analysis, Alshetairy approaches art as a field where logic and intuition continually collide. Her practice dismantles epistemic, perceptual, and temporal structures to ask how meaning is constructed, regulated, and quietly destabilized within contemporary systems. In Suspended Presence, she turns this lens toward the conditions of modern awareness shaped by acceleration, mediation, and non-linear time.

“Time accelerates, attention fragments, and emotion is increasingly shaped by systems designed to optimize response rather than experience,” Alshetairy writes of the exhibition. “Everything moves forward, yet something inside us hesitates.”

Through a series of installations and abstract wall works, Alshetairy constructs environments where vibration, rhythm, silence, and distortion function as tools to render the intangible perceptible. Materials such as hand-shaped rubber tubes, PVC pipes, wires, and light are arranged into dense linear fields, spirals, and circular forms that appear to hold time in place.

Works including A Circle That Forgets at the Moment of Its Completion and Repetition Intending to Flee stage hesitation, repetition, and near-imperceptible deviation as key narrative elements. In One Mistake Is Not Enough, slight errors and tremors register as the trace of a living hand within a culture that seeks to erase imperfection.

Across the exhibition, time is treated as a way of mapping emotional states such as waiting, silence, transformation, and algorithmic time, where meaning forms without our awareness. The distance between works, the use of negative space, and the low, deliberate lighting invite visitors to move slowly between these different temporal zones.

Alshetairy has exhibited regionally and internationally, including at Sharjah Art Museum, the Ministry of Culture’s landmark exhibition From Within in Diriyah, and in Berlin, Cairo, Basel, Dhahran, Riyadh, Jeddah, and Manama. To attend the opening reception, please RSVP in advance.

Exhibition Details

Artist: Donia Alshetairy Exhibition: Suspended Presence Dates: 24 February – 1 April 2026 Venue: Al Balad, Jeddah