In a solo exhibition at Dubai’s Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Najat Makki engages with her past through speckled, vibrant paints, hallucinatory paisleys and patterns, and forms emerging from dizzying brushstrokes.
The Scent of Memories exemplifies Makki’s sensibilities towards colours and what they can evoke. In Arabic its title literally translates to The Spectra of Musk, or atyaf almusk.
The title, Makki says, is a nod to her father. “My father had a perfume store, and he sold musk there,” she says. “The smell of musk has a strong presence in my memories.”
The Scent of Memories opens with a quartet of works titled Four Seasons. They embody summer, winter, autumn and spring, with circles of gold, white, black and teal painted on Indian textiles with backdrops evoking each of the four seasons.
