In her new commission for Art Dubai 2025, Kuwaiti artist Alymamah Rashed brings her signature surrealist figures into dialogue with Piaget’s iconic Sixtie Collection. Blending spirit, form, and material, her work Your Love Moves Around My Trapeze Sun (Will You Hold Our Glistening Light?) explores presence, rebirth, and light.
How do you approach new commissions?
I believe every commission is dialogue. It’s a way to extend my figures onto their work as well and onto their legacy. Collaborating with Piaget was absolutely effortless because we had a strong dialogue. Piaget’s legacy is rooted in movement; eternal, fluid, and glowing. That language already existed in my practice, so when I was invited to create a work inspired by their Sixtie collection, I saw it as an opportunity to let my ‘bodified’ spirits dress themselves in Piaget’s jewels and history. It was a conversation through form.
What did you see in Piaget’s Sixtie Collection that inspired the new work?
Immediately, when I saw the trapeze shape of the watch, it looked like a sun that radiates. So I wanted to paint a figure or paint the spirit that nourishes all of life. And life to me comes in blue, it’s seeded in blue specifically, and you see all of life evolving around the piece, and revolving around the sun, orbiting it. You can see the figures hugging the sun, cultivating Piaget’s legacy. So it just felt like a marriage, it felt very natural and effortless to do that.
That moment became the essence of the work and is echoed in the title: Your Love Moves Around My Trapeze Sun (Will You Hold Our Glistening Light?)
How does this commission sit within your overall practice?
Each of my works is a rebirth. With this piece, I wanted to experiment with new compositions while still anchoring it in my visual vocabulary. It’s a homage and a continuation at the same time.
It’s special because I wanted to combine colours that I already use within my practice but to pair them in a different composition. I also wanted to take their own craftsmanship that is seen within their pieces and to embed that attention to detail by mixing my paint using raw pigments of lapis, gold mica, and gold leaf techniques that are sensed and existed within various pieces from Piaget. I also wanted to ‘bodify’ the spirit of Piaget because within my practice, each work is an attempt to give the spirit a human form that does not repeat itself; this evokes a feeling of an eternal birth. The soul is reborn eternally to cultivate a sense of present that is rooted within the seed of life.
Tell us about the eyes in your work.
Eyes serve as the portal through which the viewer can enter into my work however they wish and regardless if they know my narrative or not. The face is the eye and one eye is expanded to serve as a gate to enter into the spirit, the composition, and the fluctuation found within the work itself. The eye is a moment to acknowledge that you and I are connected and you are the one to initiate this connection if you allow it.
What do you hope viewers will take away from this piece at Art Dubai?
I hope they enter and leave with presence. My work is meant to serve as a mirror and a moment of remembrance. I want the viewer, regardless of who they are, to feel a sense of light, a sense of return, and maybe even a little freedom.
