Roshanak Sattari and the UAE’s 54th Anniversary

Roshanak Sattari’s painting Awakened Time positions itself, both conceptually and structurally, in a dialogue between Modernism and Postmodernism—where the city is no longer a purely physical landscape but a geography of memory and collective consciousness. The symbolism of the clock and the watchful eyes continues the historical tradition of using emblems of power, time, and surveillance. Meanwhile, the modern architecture and nocturnal execution align the work with contemporary urban…

The UAE at 54 and the Painting of Mehrdad Fallah

In this mixed-media work, Mehrdad Fallah presents a contemporary visual narrative of the UAE’s national identity through an eloquent interplay of color, texture, composition, and symbolic form. The presence of gold—applied with genuine gold leaf—emerges like a sacred radiance against the textured background, a luminosity that unmistakably conveys notions of grandeur, prosperity, and flourishing. It reflects today’s UAE as a young yet powerful and internationally recognized nation.

At the Threshold of the UAE’s 54th Anniversary:Bita Vakili’s Painting in the Raha Gallery Collection

The fusion of the Abu Dhabi mosque (tradition) with the towers (modernity) re-creates a visual discourse of Emirati identity—an identity rising from the earth and reaching toward the sky. Bita Vakili’s painting, housed in the Raha Gallery Middle East Collection, illustrates that today’s UAE is the result of the coexistence of tradition and technology, faith and development, Islamic architecture and global innovation—a nation looking toward the future while never forgetting its roots. Beyond…