Time the destroyer is time the preserver. The most expansive presentation to date by Chilean artist Jorge Tacla will be on view from 8 February to 7 June 2026 at Al Mureijah Square in Sharjah.
The exhibition brings together four decades of Tacla’s paintings, reaffirming the role of human memory and perception at a time when visual culture is increasingly shaped by machine vision. Through depictions of buildings and landscapes rendered ‘in negative’, Tacla defines form through absence, inviting viewers to reflect on how historical events are embedded in individual and collective consciousness.
Titled after a line from a poem by T.S. Eliot, the exhibition is structured into eight thematic chapters. It examines how enduring truths can be unearthed in the aftermath of destruction, while challenging conventional hierarchies of suffering and simplistic binaries of victim and perpetrator. Tacla’s works also explore the structural violence that links seemingly unrelated events across time and geography.
The exhibition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, with Abdulla Aljanahi serving as Curatorial Assistant.
