Tala Worrell
Tala Worrell (b. 1991) was born in New York City in 1991 and raised in Abu Dhabi. Wor- rell’s cultural exposure as a Lebanese American woman raised in the United Arab Emir- ates is steeped in diverse sets of values; prevailing is the necessity of acceptance and openness to conflicting ways of understanding.
Through this lens, Worrell’s approach to abstraction is distilled in the belief that every aesthetic decision involves the resolution Of ethical dilemmas.
In her democratic use of materials – oils, alkyds, and industrial paints are as valuable as less common media like za’atar, chia seeds, and sesame seeds-Worrell poignantly reflects on her multivalent background.
Dichotomies fuel Worrell’s work, which involves wide-ranging experimental processes, and she employs tensions in the contrasts of surfaces, material choices, and chromatic decisions to her advantage as she considers and processes quotidian physical and visual encounters.
In her works, Worrell deftly navigates the shifting tides where ‘East and West,’ religious and secular, familial and individual, and psychological and somatic converge.
EDUCATION
2014: Rhode Island Of Design,
2012: BA, Brown University, Rhode Island, LISA
RESIDENCIES
2025: Bait Shouaib Art REsidncy, Deddah, KSA
2020: Artist-in-Residence, Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2015—2016: Fellow, Binf Hamdan Foundation Emerging Artists Abu Dhabi,
2014-2015: Homework Space Program, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon
Fairs
Abu Dhabi Art Fair with Iyad Qanazea Gallery
Gallery Represents Tala Worrell
Iyad Qanazea Gallery (Abu Dhabi)
Franklin Parrasch Gallery (New York)
COMA Gallery (Sydney)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025: Participating in Abu Dhabi art fair with Iyad Qanazea gallery
2025: Lost & Found, Iyad Qanazea Gallery, I-JAE—Abu Dhabi
2024: Down Line, COMA, Chippendale, Australia (May 24—June 22)
2023: Tala Worrell: Phosphenes, parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles, CA (June 10-July 22)
2022: Tala Worrell, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY (September 22-October 28)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024: image-ridden impulse, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, NY (July 11-August 23)
2025: Blind Date 2.0, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany (November 2, 2025-January 6, 2024)
2022: Warehouse 421: Speculative Links, Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE
2021: As We Gaze IJpon Her, Warehouse 421, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2019: In the Spirit, 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY
2018: Letters: Fragments of a Memory, Athr at Abu Dhabi Art, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2016 Community and Critique, Warehouse 421, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2015: I Spy With My Little Eye…: A New Generation of Beirut Artists, The Mosaic Rooms, London, I-JK Exposure 6: Construction, Beirut Art Center, Beirut,
PRESS
2024: “Balancing East and West,” Monster Children, May.
2023: “Pointing Outside the Lines,” W Magazine [The Art Issue], November
2016: “Abu Dhabi in Black and White,” Tribe Photo Magazine, Issue 5
