藝術家烏曼（Uman）的作品是關於對比之美的一場深度探尋。畫面中，那些看似不和諧的色彩組合，卻以萬千姿態變幻，與她於畫布上精心營造的動態圖案及肌理效果交相輝映。烏曼的畫作引人駐足，凝神細觀，在迷離之間彷彿能窺見靈動身影；而另一些，如《Zam Zam Bom Bom》（2023），則將觀者瞬間捲入一場喧囂盛宴，視覺衝擊力十足。她標誌性的球體元素，散發著璀璨光芒，以一種輕盈的舞姿在畫面中游弋，周圍纏繞著鋸齒狀線條與起伏的餘弦波。在畫布的其他區域，如同書法般的迴旋筆觸，掙脫了構圖的束縛，盤旋於畫面邊緣，似乎渴望突破畫框的限制。

這些繪畫技法在她近期作品中反覆出現，也預示著藝術家一次重大的遷徙。在紐約居住二十載後，她計劃於明年春季移居法國南部。

烏曼對「移居」一詞並不陌生。上世紀80年代，她的家庭在索馬里內戰期間逃離家園，抵達肯亞蒙巴薩（Mombasa），她在那裡度過了青少年時期，之後又移居丹麥。為了追求更自由、更穩定的創作環境，烏曼於21世紀初選擇移民美國，定居紐約。正是在這座城市，她開始了自學繪畫的藝術探索。2010年，她北遷後，終於尋得了可以靜心創作、揮灑創意的僻靜之處，這段時期也成為了她藝術創作的黃金時代。

在那裡，烏曼得以自由探尋自身的藝術語言。其早期作品描繪了她在林間的新環境，她沉醉於此，著筆於樹木、飛鳥與自畫像，目光流連於季節流轉的瞬息之美。當時，她嘗試具象畫與拼貼，選用了大地色調及憂鬱沉靜的配色。2015年，她在紐約White Columns的首次個展，展出了神秘的人物肖像以及抽象、混合媒介作品，色彩從陰影般朦朧幽暗的背景後隱現，呼之欲出，意圖佔據視覺中心。隨著創作上的不斷探索，她對紡織品與時裝的熱情也逐漸融入作品之中，那些明艷活潑的色彩，令人想起她在肯亞童年宅邸中無處不在的繁複織物美學。「我們很喜歡圖案，」烏曼近期在工作室的一次視像通話中分享道，「這是我成長的文化。從地板到天花板，處處皆是圖案。我的母親喜歡重新裝飾傢俱，祖母擅長鉤編，家中總能看到鮮豔多彩的新物件。」

首次個展迅速讓這位藝術家在藝術界聲名鵲起，隨後個展與群展邀約不斷。烏曼目前居住在紐約州中部的Cooperstown，並計劃在她前往法國期間，繼續維持位於奧爾巴尼（Albany，約90分鐘車程）的工作室運作。她坦言此次搬遷心情複雜，她的首次機構個展「Uman: After all the things...」上個月在奧爾德里奇當代藝術博物館（Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum）開幕。這場展覽由Amy Smith-Stewart策劃，似乎標誌著她一個創作時代的落幕。「在紐約生活了二十年，這就好像是在告別這段歲月，」她說道，「在奧爾德里奇的這場展覽，是我寫給紐約上州生活的情書。」

在奧爾德里奇的Project Space裡，她標誌性的球體構成了巨幅壁畫，懸浮於展廳四壁。《Melancholia in a Fall Breeze》（2025）由籃球大小的黑色圓形色塊組成，沿著拱形白牆，從高處窗戶傾瀉而下。在空間中央，烏曼安裝了一件牧羊人手杖造型的大型街燈雕塑，由加州工匠以廢金屬和吹製玻璃打造。這盞燈的形象也出現在雕塑後方牆壁上懸掛的一幅畫作中，燈身散發出絢爛多彩的光暈，宛如飄落的樹葉。兩件作品的靈感皆來源於她奧爾巴尼工作室附近的一盞街燈。「搬到紐約上州後，我的創作開始轉型，煥發了新的面貌，」她說道，「這盞燈已成為光明、探索與創意覺醒的象徵。散佈在壁畫牆上的圓點和雪花形態，延續了同樣的精神，它們自然的韻律、動感與流動，都是我生命中的微小印記。」在這盞街燈雕塑落成的歡慶時刻，烏曼解下頸間絲巾，將其系於燈柱基部。自此，絲巾也成為展覽的一部分。「直覺告訴我，我必須在這個空間裡留下自己的一部分，」她解釋道，「這樣一來，燈就成了我的自畫像。」

在奧爾德里奇的展覽（10月19日開幕）之後，同月月底，她在紐約Nicola Vassell藝廊的個展「I Love You After Everything」也相繼拉開帷幕。這兩場展覽，既是對其過往的深度內省，亦是對迫使她遷居的當下境遇的回應。「我認為，這兩場展覽，都是我發自內心的喜悅之產物，」她說道，「但我也想說，喜悅是相對的。 今年並非坦途，我歷經了不少艱難時刻，這些體驗都已融入我的作品之中，你們或許能從中窺見心碎、痛苦，以及失落的痕跡。」

步入2025年，一股令人熟悉的暴力與壓制浪潮在美國社會再度湧現，讓藝術家們感到在此地生活既不安寧也不安全。「美國正在改變，」她說道，「這讓我重新覺得自己像個需要逃離的移民。我當初來這裡是為了尋求平和與寧靜，但現在，尤其是在今年，這兩種感覺都消失了。」眼前的景象無疑觸動了烏曼一些童年記憶，她一直試圖在作品中以明亮、充滿活力的色彩主題來平衡和消解這些陰影，同時，她也巧妙地將怒火傾瀉在畫布上。「在Nicola Vassell藝廊的一幅畫中，藏著一個豎中指的圖案，」她笑著透露，「有人說它看起來像被子，但走近看就會發現一根中指。我在畫中添加的這些細節，是我在作品中開的小玩笑。」

烏曼正在嘗試以個人攝影作品為元素創作新的拼貼畫，同時為2026年在巴德學院赫塞爾藝術博物館（Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College）舉辦的回顧展準備一個全新的幾何繪畫系列，該展覽由藝術總監Lauren Cornell策展。 這些馬賽克般的構圖，令人想起她年少時常去的肯亞沿海小鎮那些瓷磚拼貼的牆面與壁畫。展望前路，烏曼也開始探索新媒介，並期待著遷居至法國Bagnols-sur-Cèze後的新生活。「我會重複當年遷居紐約上州時的做法，先安頓下來，重新熟悉環境，找到自己的生活節奏。然後打造一個工作室，讓它成為我的專屬天地，」她說道，「我嚮往這樣一個地方，在那裡我可以放鬆下來，悠閒漫步，河中暢遊，享受寧靜的生活。」

The works see Al-Maria layer and warp these linear motifs – in a gesture that bends time’s singular, inevitable path, and vindicates a cultural history and identity that finds itself ever at odds with the Gulf’s ‘future-forward’ progression. The sound installation compounds the elegiac timbre of the wall-based works, drawing upon contemporary, over-auto-tuned renditions of Bedouin folk poems (sheilat) and the formal structures of pre-Islamic poetry like the rhyming, single-meter qasidah. ‘I often reference the way these poems open: a poet coming upon traces in the desert; ashes or burnt wood from a fire; a footprint, or a ramshackle, ruined home.’ Recorded in collaboration with the artist’s father, the soundscape is also an aural tribute, Al-Maria says, ‘to my brothers, my father, and men in my family, who I think are constantly othered and misjudged. Not just in the West, but also in the region.’

It is this achingly human texture that gives the work meaning beyond statement-making. Yes, Al-Maria is essentially allegorizing her family history to draw attention to complex realities, but this is also an attempt to ‘make a little ode, in the qasidah sense,’ she says, ‘to my family and to the shock and awe of going from a free agrarian lifestyle to technological capitalism and consumerism within a decade or two.’ There is also the sheer number of family members who have died in violent car accidents. ‘Most of them were young men – though my grandfather also died that way,’ she explains. HiLux, then, becomes an expression of personal grief, with the weight of its mourning carried far beyond the tragedy of individual lives lost. ‘It’s a eulogy for futures that never arrived – and for the fact we’re all going to be victims of a future we knew was coming. Whether or not we’re at the wheel is the question.’

The presentation marks a prodigal return to Doha for Al-Maria, who has been based in the US, Berlin, and London, her current location, since last living in Qatar in the early 2010s – though she staged a major solo exhibition in Doha at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in 2022, the year Qatar hosted the World Cup. This homecoming’s significance is reinforced by the fact that, for a number of years now, Al-Maria has ‘tried to avoid being geographically defined,’ consciously flowing her practice around the art academy’s will to situate artists and their work within the context of their origins.

Irrespective of geography, a throughline of much of Al-Maria’s recent work has been the act of challenging dominant perspectives, and revealing how they steer life’s direction, whether at the granular level of personal interactions or the macro-scale of global policymaking. Often, this has entailed a fourth-wall-shattering invocation of agency and participation – mental or physical – on the part of her public. A five-day stand-up performance she staged in London this fall, for example, disturbed the assumed sincerity of an art-fair context. In her first major performance venture to date, Al-Maria invoked comedy’s potential to address the world’s grim realities without overtly overstepping the thin red line. ‘I actually did a strike on the second day’ – a Thursday, Al-Maria highlights, aligning with the global general strikes for Gaza that have been taking place on Thursdays since August 2025.

The following day brought with it a speech on access to land rights; the day after, Al-Maria’s ‘marriage’ to an audience member. ‘People were responsive, which felt really sweet,’ she says. ‘But it really felt like the fair couldn't control this space,’ which offered a necessary counterpoint to institutional contexts. And her most recent institutional exhibition, ‘Grey Unpleasant Land’ (2024) at Spike Island in Bristol, a dual-showing with Algeria-born artist Lydia Ourahmane, offered a searing interrogation of the material and mythological premises of Britain’s national identity.

HiLux is not exactly an extension of Al-Maria’s intentions in the Bristol show, but the artist’s preoccupation with the hegemonic processes and logics of modern nation-state building abides. Just as the qasidah traditionally opens with the discovery of eerie traces of long-lost humanity in the desert, Al-Maria’s decal drawings become remnants of erased histories and compromised futures, transferred onto sky-rising walls of mirrored glass and steel just as ‘the window of opportunity to change path is closing.’ The sense of apocalypse at the presentation’s heart is impossible to shake off, but Al-Maria sees it more as ‘the lifting of a veil; a realization and revelation of that which is coming. And, also, a submission to the fact that we can't all drive.’