Souad Bennani Smires – Umbra

AA Gallery is pleased to present 𝑼𝑴𝑩𝑹𝑨, Souad Bennani Smires’ first solo exhibition with the gallery, bringing together 50 works in a scenography that brings painting, sculpture and installation into dialogue.

Inspired by the living world, from the infinitely small to the infinitely vast, the artist explores the forms and movements that connect organic structures to inner landscapes. Cellular patterns, honeycomb structures and undulating lines unfold across her compositions, evoking, at different scales, both microscopic architectures and geological formations. Rather than reproducing nature, her work reveals the underlying structures and rhythms that shape it.

Light emerges in fragments, through transparency, materiality and subtle shifts in surface. Rather than opposing shadow, it takes shape in relation to it. The exhibition’s title, 𝑼𝑴𝑩𝑹𝑨 — from the Latin for “shadow” — evokes this interplay of light and darkness, presence and absence.