Art Here is an annual contemporary art exhibition and competition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi held in partnership with the Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille that brings together contemporary artists from different regions. Each edition engages with the museum architecture and bring a unique theme.

The 2025 edition curated under the theme “Shadows” explores how light and darkness shape our perception, emotions and memories. This year six artists participated each interpreting shadows in their own way but art work done by Hamra Abbas is my favorite.

Hamra Abbas a Pakistani visual artist born in Kuwait and now based in Lahore opens the exhibition with her signature stone inlay work. She studied at the National College of Arts in Lahore and later at Berlin’s University Kunste. Her life in different cities especially Berlin and Boston influenced her early work but her return to Pakistan in 2015 changed her practice. She began working with marble inlay techniques inspired by local marble factories and shifted her focus toward creating works that connect deeply with her homeland. Today her art often draws inspiration from gardens, symbolizing ecology, nature and the concept of Paradise.

For Art Here 2025 Hamra Abbas presents Tree Studies an installation of 31 stone sculptures representing tree species like olive, pomegranate, cherry, banyan and ghaf. Using detailed botanical sketches collected during her travels she created each piece in lapis lazuli inlay producing shadow like patterns of leaves and foliage. The deep blue stone interacts with light in the Ottoman pavement fountain courtyard of Louvre Abudhabi. It is creating forms that sit between realism and abstraction. In her work shadows are not just the absence of light they carry memory, movement and meaning.

By bringing this precious material into a local context Hamra Abbas connects centuries of history with contemporary environmental and cultural concerns. In the exhibition Tree Studies invites visitors to imagine lush living gardens emerging from shadows carved in stone.

Other artists in Art Here 2025 include Ahmad Alaqra, who explores urban shadows and memory YOKOMAE BOUAYAD an architectural duo creating moving, cloud like shade, Ryoichi Kurokawa a Japanese audiovisual artist who transforms light and fog into ephemeral experiences. Jumairy who explores digital shadows and interactive performances and Rintaro Fuse whose sundial installation connects shadows to time and the cosmos. Each of these artists contributes to the exhibition and offering a powerful meditation on light, shadow, nature, and cultural memory.

Through Tree Studies Hamra Abbas shows that shadows are not empty they carry stories, history and beauty. Her work transforms light and shade into living, meaningful forms and it is making her installation the centerpiece of Art Here 2025.