In tracing Fahd Burki’s oeuvre, one might recognise a slow surrender to emptiness. Over the past decade, the artist has been dismantling the figures and protagonists in his early figurative works, which contain surreal scenes inspired by comic books, to arrive at minimalist and abstract creations that challenge formal notions of painting.
This gradual and precise shift can be seen in the more than 50 works brought together at Jameel Arts Centre for Burki’s first mid-career survey. Titled Daydreams, the exhibition gathers paintings, works on paper and sculptures made over the past 15 years, and runs from Saturday to October 9. The show also features commissioned pieces, including four reliefs, a form that Burki has been exploring since 2020, and a painting.
Spread across three galleries, the works are not arranged chronologically but are plotted out to trace how the artist has hovered between figuration and abstraction over the years.
“With a show like this, you start to select works that are pivotal to the practice, that have fundamentally had a big influence on the work that came after. So the challenge was to pinpoint these,” Burki says. “I always keep an eye on what I’ve been doing in the past. I’m very aware of how it’s been evolving.”
His early paintings, from his time as a young artist at the National College of Arts in Lahore, which he graduated from in 2003, are filled with odd machinery and unusual figures that indicate an ongoing narrative. An untitled painting from 2004 depicts a nightmarish scene — a desert landscape where a half-man, half-ram gestures towards a couple, the woman burqa-clad and one-eyed, clutching at cotton candy.
Burki, who lives and works in Lahore, attributes these creations to his childhood fascination with comic books and graphic novels. Growing up, his interest in books was more for the visuals than the text. “My grandparents had many books and I would just flip through them to look at the pictures, but was never interested in reading what was next to them,” he recalls.
In addition to Marvel and DC, he read Franco-Belgian comics such as Asterix and the works of Moebius, the pseudonym for French cartoonist Jean Henri Gaston Giraud.
He carried this interest into his practice while at university, studying at one of Pakistan’s most established institutions. At that point, he had considered architecture as a more straightforward career, but decided that he couldn’t see himself “working for clients”, although elements of architecture eventually appeared in his work. He explains: “I wanted to do something where I had more control, where I was the author.”
His training hammered in figuration as the default approach. “The first impulse was to do something realistic,” he says. “Coming from graphic media and comic books, there was this emphasis on figure, the build, muscles, anatomy, that automatically led me to painting figures.”
From 2006 onwards, however, Burki had begun removing his characters from their settings, flattening them against blank backgrounds with little shading.
These hybrid beasts often possess recognisable animal characteristics — horns, mouths, limbs and beaks — though some are faceless or are morphing into objects. At times, his subjects can appear as though they’ve been readapted from indigenous cultures in Asia and the Americas. In Vessel (2007), a menacing creature with pointed ears appears like something out of folklore, while Totem (2007) depicts a more playful version of a totem pole figure.
Burki continued his distillation of form and features from 2009 to 2012. His subjects had become more angular, less identifiable in terms of body parts. This erasure takes away other things — signifiers of time and place, clues on cultural contexts. Narratives begin to loosen in these works, with the artist allowing us to imagine them on our own.
“It’s about world-building through figures,” he explains. “I wanted to make a series of characters that would help people imagine what sort of world they would come from.” His protagonists could easily be from underground or outer space, and though this trove of characters is ultimately Burki’s personal mythology, they lend themselves to many interpretations.
Though the difference in styles is evident, some characters can be interpreted as transformations of versions past. A blue sphinx-like mechanical rocking horse in the 2003 painting Vespa becomes a slick, black bulbous thing in Fixed (2007), while the earlier Totem (2007) expands into a wooden sculpture, Optimist, by 2012.
From 2013, Burki’s focus turned to architectural and geometric elements, creating blueprint-like works such as Night Walk (2014) and playing with perspective and colour in Seeking Eden (2014), the latter hinting towards a more painterly approach that would become more prominent in later creations. A series of works on paper from 2016 include his most delicate pieces, contemplative visions mapped out on grids. In Winter’s End, Burki captures the diffusion of light in lines of pastel green and brown, their hues seeming to recede the longer you look at them.
His Interval series from 2017 are paintings that mimic the appearance of concrete slabs adorned with little but horizontal or diagonal lines that cut across the frame. Burki does away with colour, as well, muting his palette down to brown and grey.
It is perhaps during this period in his practice that Burki forged his unique approach to painting, where subtraction becomes ever-active in a reverse process of creation. “When you spend a decade or more painting, you eventually understand painting in itself as a subject. It’s not about making an image any more,” he explains. These recent works were borne out of questions around medium, form and material, he says.
In his 2020 show at Grey Noise in Dubai, titled Minutes before I fall asleep, Burki’s hand became even more restrained. The works built from the series in 2017 and 2018turning and turned paintings into more sculptural pieces. Dimensions were not rendered through paint, but through the edges of the material’s surfaces. In a Tribe of one’s own (2019), colour is hardly on the canvas. Instead, Burki migrated the colours to the wooden frames on the side, adding notches of blue, brown and white.
His skill in painting also becomes one of disguise. His modular piece Dwelling, made up of wood, could be mistaken for rubber or even stone with its matte grey coating. In 2022, the artist has left the canvas untouched in two of his new commissioned works; instead, he builds composites from several segments of canvas.
It would be too easy to consider Burki’s reductionist process as restrictive, but the effect is quite the opposite. He opens up painting to a new plane of possibility. The eye does not try to flit from one element to another as it might on a figurative piece, but rather it travels deliberately across and along the space of the frame, careful not to miss a detail. With an art form as old and well-worn as painting, it is rare to find artists striking at something new, though Burki has steadily and decidedly arrived at it.
Daydreams is on at Jameel Arts Centre from March 5 to October 9. More information is available at jameelartscentre.org
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
GROUPS AND FIXTURES
Group A
UAE, Italy, Japan, Spain
Group B
Egypt, Iran, Mexico, Russia
Tuesday
4.15pm: Italy v Japan
5.30pm: Spain v UAE
6.45pm: Egypt v Russia
8pm: Iran v Mexico
Citadel: Honey Bunny first episode
Directors: Raj & DK
Stars: Varun Dhawan, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Kashvi Majmundar, Kay Kay Menon
Rating: 4/5
MATCH INFO
Crawley Town 3 (Tsaroulla 50', Nadesan 53', Tunnicliffe 70')
Leeds United 0
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
David Haye record
Total fights: 32
Wins: 28
Wins by KO: 26
Losses: 4
The specs: McLaren 600LT
Price, base: Dh914,000
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 600hp @ 7,500rpm
Torque: 620Nm @ 5,500rpm
Fuel economy 12.2.L / 100km
Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
Global Fungi Facts
• Scientists estimate there could be as many as 3 million fungal species globally
• Only about 160,000 have been officially described leaving around 90% undiscovered
• Fungi account for roughly 90% of Earth's unknown biodiversity
• Forest fungi help tackle climate change, absorbing up to 36% of global fossil fuel emissions annually and storing around 5 billion tonnes of carbon in the planet's topsoil
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
How has net migration to UK changed?
The figure was broadly flat immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic, standing at 216,000 in the year to June 2018 and 224,000 in the year to June 2019.
It then dropped to an estimated 111,000 in the year to June 2020 when restrictions introduced during the pandemic limited travel and movement.
The total rose to 254,000 in the year to June 2021, followed by steep jumps to 634,000 in the year to June 2022 and 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
The latest available figure of 728,000 for the 12 months to June 2024 suggests levels are starting to decrease.
THE BIO
Favourite book: ‘Purpose Driven Life’ by Rick Warren
Favourite travel destination: Switzerland
Hobbies: Travelling and following motivational speeches and speakers
Favourite place in UAE: Dubai Museum
Scoreline
Syria 1-1 Australia
Syria Al Somah 85'
Australia Kruse 40'
Total eligible population
About 57.5 million people
51.1 million received a jab
6.4 million have not
Where are the unvaccinated?
England 11%
Scotland 9%
Wales 10%
Northern Ireland 14%
The%20specs
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
How Islam's view of posthumous transplant surgery changed
Transplants from the deceased have been carried out in hospitals across the globe for decades, but in some countries in the Middle East, including the UAE, the practise was banned until relatively recently.
Opinion has been divided as to whether organ donations from a deceased person is permissible in Islam.
The body is viewed as sacred, during and after death, thus prohibiting cremation and tattoos.
One school of thought viewed the removal of organs after death as equally impermissible.
That view has largely changed, and among scholars and indeed many in society, to be seen as permissible to save another life.
SPECS
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Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh590,000
Copa del Rey
Barcelona v Real Madrid
Semi-final, first leg
Wednesday (midnight UAE)
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
MATCH INFO
Cricket World Cup League Two
Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Namibia beat Oman by 52 runs
UAE beat Namibia by eight wickets
UAE v Oman - abandoned
Oman v Namibia - abandoned
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Also on December 7 to 9, the third edition of the Gulf Car Festival (www.gulfcarfestival.com) will take over Dubai Festival City Mall, a new venue for the event. Last year's festival brought together about 900 cars worth more than Dh300 million from across the Emirates and wider Gulf region – and that first figure is set to swell by several hundred this time around, with between 1,000 and 1,200 cars expected. The first day is themed around American muscle; the second centres on supercars, exotics, European cars and classics; and the final day will major in JDM (Japanese domestic market) cars, tuned vehicles and trucks. Individuals and car clubs can register their vehicles, although the festival isn’t all static displays, with stunt drifting, a rev battle, car pulls and a burnout competition.
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
TOURNAMENT INFO
Fixtures
Sunday January 5 - Oman v UAE
Monday January 6 - UAE v Namibia
Wednesday January 8 - Oman v Namibia
Thursday January 9 - Oman v UAE
Saturday January 11 - UAE v Namibia
Sunday January 12 – Oman v Namibia
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Mohammed Usman, CP Rizwan, Waheed Ahmed, Zawar Farid, Darius D’Silva, Karthik Meiyappan, Jonathan Figy, Vriitya Aravind, Zahoor Khan, Junaid Siddique, Basil Hameed, Chirag Suri
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
Cryopreservation: A timeline
- Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
- Ovarian tissue surgically removed
- Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
- Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
- Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
Celta Vigo 2
Castro (45'), Aspas (82')
Barcelona 2
Dembele (36'), Alcacer (64')
Red card: Sergi Roberto (Barcelona)
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MATCH INFO
Manchester United v Everton
Where: Old Trafford, Manchester
When: Sunday, kick-off 7pm (UAE)
How to watch: Live on BeIN Sports 11HD
More on animal trafficking
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Going grey? A stylist's advice
If you’re going to go grey, a great style, well-cared for hair (in a sleek, classy style, like a bob), and a young spirit and attitude go a long way, says Maria Dowling, founder of the Maria Dowling Salon in Dubai.
It’s easier to go grey from a lighter colour, so you may want to do that first. And this is the time to try a shorter style, she advises. Then a stylist can introduce highlights, start lightening up the roots, and let it fade out. Once it’s entirely grey, a purple shampoo will prevent yellowing.
“Get professional help – there’s no other way to go around it,” she says. “And don’t just let it grow out because that looks really bad. Put effort into it: properly condition, straighten, get regular trims, make sure it’s glossy.”
The UAE squad for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games
The jiu-jitsu men’s team: Faisal Al Ketbi, Zayed Al Kaabi, Yahia Al Hammadi, Taleb Al Kirbi, Obaid Al Nuaimi, Omar Al Fadhli, Zayed Al Mansoori, Saeed Al Mazroui, Ibrahim Al Hosani, Mohammed Al Qubaisi, Salem Al Suwaidi, Khalfan Belhol, Saood Al Hammadi.
Women’s team: Mouza Al Shamsi, Wadeema Al Yafei, Reem Al Hashmi, Mahra Al Hanaei, Bashayer Al Matrooshi, Hessa Thani, Salwa Al Ali.
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
