In Absence and in Presence charts the ways in which land can be reimagined, redefined and reclaimed through the work of artists from West Asia, South Asia, Africa and its diaspora. Featuring over 70 selections from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection installed across three galleries of the Aranya Art Center Guangzhou, the exhibition follows some of the unique trajectories of artistic practice and experiments in these regions, as expressed in painting, sculpture, photography and video. Taking its title from Egyptian artist, poet, and writer Ahmed Morsi, whose multidisciplinary practice has long engaged with questions of displacement and the persistence of place, In Absence and in Presence unfolds through thematic constellations that explore the interrelations among land, the people who inhabit it, and the imagination that animates it.

Land is approached not only as a geographic condition or setting, but as an enduring presence that informs the artists’ visual language. Human figures appear throughout the galleries as carriers of personal and collective histories, revealing how the identities tied to land can travel across places and generations. Together, the works propose new ways of thinking about continuity and the possibility of belonging across shifting geographies.

The exhibition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, and Damien Zhang, Director of the Aranya Art Center, with May Alqaydi, Assistant Curator and  Souraya Kreidieh, Senior Researcher at Sharjah Art Foundation, as well as Li Fangwen, Curatorial Assistant, and Li Xinyang, Curatorial and Research Fellow at the Aranya Art Center. It is organised by Aranya Art Center in collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation.