CHRISTOPHER JOSHUA BENTON

Benton, an American artist who has lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates for the past decade, presents a new series of kilim tapestries developed in collaboration with a weaving circle of women in Kabul, Afghanistan: Fatima, Fawzia, Qadria, Tahira, Zahra, Zakia, and Ziagul. Together, these works deepen the artist’s ongoing inquiry into civic imagination, communal infrastructure, and collective belonging

The exhibition coincides with the one-year anniversary of Where Lies My Carpet is Thy Home and briefly reflects on this collaborative installation created with carpet merchants from Abu Dhabi’s souk. Developed through intimate majlis storytelling sessions, the work weaves together memories of the merchants’ homelands in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India with their present lives in the Emirates. Its cascading valleys portray personal histories, including Wali’s longing for his Afghan apple orchard and Abdul’s recollections of trading sheep in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, blending the visual language of Afghan war carpets with a kilim-like, pixelated 8-bit.

Larger than a football field, recognised as the second-largest carpet ever produced and potentially the largest majlis ever conceived, the installation mirrors the full lifecycle of a carpet and proposes a decolonial, body-first experience of art. Today, it remains a permanent public plaza co-designed with the community, continuing to support the Afghan and Pakistani residents of the souk.

At the heart of The Obligation of the Circle are new tapestries that map intertwined narratives of migration, gendered labour, and the yearning for homecoming. If Benton’s earlier Carpet Souq project focused on the lives of men inhabiting the upper levels of the souk, this new body of work turns toward the labour of women in Kabul, constructing a ‘cartography of return’ that connects intimate acts of weaving to broader histories of displacement, care, and community. Through convening diverse audiences around shared acts of making and storytelling, Benton invites reflection on how urban narratives are shaped, how communities coexist, and how artists can build spaces of empathy and exchange within their environments.

The show also features a selection from Benton’s personal collection of Afghan war carpets, as well as a community wall, a large-scale photographic installation accompanied by printed images documenting interventions that have taken place in the souk. Together, these elements generate a dialogue between memory, territory, and collective practice, transforming the gallery into a site of encounter and reflection.

Additionally, the project welcomes discursive and process-based contributions from other voices that orbit Benton’s practice, including Marisa Morán Jahn, Faustin Linyekula, and others, whose dialogues with the artist expand the understanding of community. This ecology of collaboration is reflected in the fact that proceeds from the production of the works support Zuleya, a social enterprise dedicated to preserving Afghanistan’s ancient weaving traditions through education, free healthcare, and sustainable employment.

The Obligation of the Circle will open on 21 November 2025, from 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM, coinciding with Gallery Night at Abu Dhabi Art 2025, and will remain on view until 13 March 2026.