Fatma Lootah

Biography

Fatma Lootah is an Emirati artist and a recognized cultural ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, working across abstract, performance, and installation art. Her practice explores the relationship between the body, land, and memory, often working with earth and natural materials to build installations layered with sound. At Art Dubai Special Edition 2026, presented by RARARES Gallery, Lootah showed an earth installation whose forms suggested vessels and absence, paired with a sound layer introducing flowering, breath, and continuous cyclical movement, offered as one of the quieter, more lasting works of the fair. Her related series The Ghaf Tree approaches the ghaf, the national tree of the United Arab Emirates, as an embodiment of roots, belonging, and the layered stories carried by the Emirati landscape. Lootah's work spans abstract and performance art and has been exhibited internationally, including in Italy, France, Austria, and Morocco, alongside extensive shows across the UAE. She is also known for photographing interiors, objects, and everyday life rendered in vivid, saturated color, extending her interest in memory and presence into a documentary register. Represented by RARARES Gallery, Lootah is considered one of the most important artists working in the UAE today, with a practice defined by depth, rootedness, and a consistent return to questions of land, body, and belonging.