Everywhere, the Winds of Change stir the earth,
shaping cities, shifting destinies, whispering stories of rise and fall.

When I compare my home country with the Middle East,
I see how swiftly these winds move—
gentle breezes in some places, violent tempests in others.

The discovery of oil brought immense wealth to the Arabian Gulf,
unleashing progress at an astonishing pace.
Skylines rose, infrastructure expanded,
and lives were elevated to heights once unimaginable.
Employment flourished, opportunities multiplied,
as hundreds of thousands arrived, drawn by promise and prosperity.

Yet, elsewhere, the winds carried despair.
Some nations, engulfed in war and unrest,
found themselves slipping backward,
crushed beneath conflict’s heavy hand.
Others, invaded and occupied, bore the scars of destruction,
their foundations weakened, their futures uncertain.

And in the midst of these transformations,
I felt the unsettling force of change firsthand.
Each summertime I returned to the UAE after just a few weeks away,
I found something different—new buildings had sprung up,
roads reworked, whole areas seemed to be transformed.
The pace of change was relentless,
a country never standing still, always pressing forward.

Yet, instead of excitement, I felt a quiet sadness—
an unspoken longing for the version of the place I had known before.
The familiarity eroded beneath the weight of progress,
and with each return, the country seemed a stranger to me.

In my homeland, time moved at a gentler pace.
After a year away, I would return to find most things
exactly as I had left it—unchanged, familiar, reassuring.
There, I could reconnect with a past that still existed,
untouched by the relentless winds of change.

And so, the winds continue to blow—
some lifting, some tearing down.
A force beyond control, yet shaping all who stand in its path.

Relentless Change

Dimensions 40″x 23″

Materials: Hand printed, Hand dyed, Hand painted Fabrics. Commercial and Batik cotton fabrics. Hand printed paper.