Maitha Abdalla tackles themes that range from folklore and mythology to gender, social conditioning, and psychology with sculptural works that harness the performative and constructed character of the theater. With these works, which shift dramatically between abstraction and representation, the artist creates characters that are often constrained within tight domestic spaces that expose their vulnerability. For Abdalla, who often applies dense layers of oil or acrylic paint with her fingertips and traces around her own figure with gestural smears of charcoal, creating art is an extension of performing with her body.

At Aichi Triennale 2025, Abdalla presents new works dealing with guilt, survival, transformation, and hope. Divided into three acts—Birth, Dance, and Death—her paintings use dinosaurs as metaphors to highlight the internal and external emotional turmoil of motherhood, the guilt borne by all humanity, and the relationship between humanity and the environment.

In Act 1: Birth, a woman gives birth to a baby with a dinosaur’s face. It represents the guilt that grows together with the child inside her. Act 2: Dance represents wavering between oneself as a woman and one’s role as a mother. Act 3: Death closes the cycle of motherhood’s efforts to live with guilt. The dinosaur, which has become gigantic, symbolizes a state in which guilt has become an overwhelming force, and the mother is about to be swallowed up, without resistance, by the being she herself gave birth to. Abdalla’s art reflects the fragility and complexity that is part of life, presenting her distinctive perspectives on issues and emotions that people deal with in today’s continually changing world.