Connected: How Efie Gallery ties contemporary African art to Dubai’s creative future
The new group exhibition at Efie Gallery in Dubai A supportive gallery and home for contemporary African art in Dubai, Efie Gallery, presents its exhibition “Time heals, just not quick enough. …” The thoughtful exhibition, curated by Nigerian curator Ose Ekore, is up at its Alserkal Avenue space from June 1 to July 30, 2025. With artists as established and generations and geography-spanning as Samuel Fosso, Aida Muluneh, Kelani Abass, Abeer Sultan, and Sumayah Fallatah, the exhibition explores such themes as healing, memory, migration, and personal identity.
Using photography, video, mixed media and storytelling, the artists express emotional experiences influenced by history, diaspora and identity. The layered work of Fallatah, for example, is about her family’s migration from Africa to the Arab world, and mixes old photos with indigo-dyed fabrics and red thread. Her video, called Fruits of Meditation, reinterprets a childhood memory of her father as a poignant meditation on inheritance and comprehension. 
The rich marine and migration history of her family looms large in Abeer Sultan, born in 1999, and her series Agua Viva. Her mixed-media pieces incorporate photos of herself, underwater scenes, and invented artifacts to construct new stories for the future. Kelani Abass similarly combines old printing methods with digital formats to comment on time and ambivalence of identity, with materials from his father’s letterpress legacy.
Samuel Fosso’s striking self-portraits from his 70s Lifestyle series explore identity and expression in post-colonial Africa. And Aida Muluneh contrastingly makes use of bright tones, surrealism, and traditional Ethiopian symbols to challenge some stereotypes of African womanhood, bringing new dimensions to the ways that womanhood is expressed in global art.
Curated by Ose Ekore — co-founder of Bootleg Griot and a key figure at the Sharjah Art Foundation — the show is led to consider the curative power of time. It invites us to slow down and re-evaluate our understanding of healing and change,” he said.
The Ghanaian family Valentina, Kwame and Kobi Mintah launched Efie Gallery in 2021 and it has quickly become an anchor in Dubai’s art scene. Situated in Alserkal Avenue, the gallery showcases African artists and the diaspora, connecting African creativity to the Middle East and beyond. It also offers artist residencies, public programs, and exchange with communities as part of a truly international conversation.
At Efie Gallery, it’s not just art on display, but rather homegrown and international narratives, stories that reframe and redefine contemporary African art for a new generation. With Belonging and History and Identity cycling as inspiration now, Efie Gallery remains a key player contributing to the need for African voices in Dubai’s increasingly thriving creative ecosystem.
