Reem al-Ghaith (b.1985, Dubai) is a young polymath who works in the fields of graphic design, printmaking, photography and poetry. After studying Visual Communication at the School of Architecture and Design at the American University of Sharjah, UAE, she participated in the Ibdaa Media Awards (2006–07) and has exhibited her graphic design at memefest.org in Slovenia (2004). Her photographic work has been exhibited in group shows including Vibrations Within, Tashkeel, Dubai (2008) and Dubai Next, at the Vitra Design Museum, Germany, curated by Rem Koolhaas and Jack Persekian (2008).

Based in Dubai, Reem forms part of a generation of young artists responding creatively to the dizzying scale of their city’s development and its increasing visibility on an international stage. Held Back is Reem’s major ongoing series of large-scale (2 x 3 metres) colour photographs that subtly reflect upon the disjunct between individual and collective histories and the rapid modernization and expansion of the city. The images in this series feature a variety of peripheral vistas. In muted tones, they look out to sea, across building sites, along roadsides and other transitory areas. They are often peppered with street signs and juxtapose empty desert against the new high-rise developments – there are no people within them, just the remnants of activity.

Within each of the scenes, Reem has placed a large black-and-white photograph within the composition. Conventionally framed and propped up vertically to appear like a doorway or window into a parallel time and space, this image offers an alternative scene with traditional buildings or older city streets. A subtle narrative appears within this secondary space which involves the figure of a young woman who looks away from us and into the scene. It is not clear if this image within the image portrays a past manifestation of the site it now occupies. We assume the figure is a self-portrait, but the effect is one of a visual dislocation between present, past and future. Reem al-Ghaith accompanies the works with the following statement:

I the figure, I held time captive. In a depopulated background. In a preserved moment, a past, a memory, my comfort. I dislocated myself from a landscape, a land reconstructing itself in time. To gaze upon the change and question. What is becoming? Echoes reverberate, a juxtaposition of times, in a constructed barrier of my own. I stand nostalgic and held back.

As a series of images, Held Back is poetic response to the ambivalence of modernization and its cultural effects. Asking whether individual and collective histories can recover some ground against the indomitable march of material progress, Reem al-Ghaith’s work presents a thoughtful proposition.