The Jameel Library presents ‘At the Edge of Renewal’, a six-month exhibition developed by the Khaleeji Women’s Library & Archive (KWLA) and curated by Jood AlThukair, including work from Nouf AlHarthi, Hayfa AlGwaiz, Abeer Sultan, Dalal AlObaidi, Yasmeen Abdal, Fatima Al Jarman and Maitha Ali, among others.

‘At the Edge of Renewal’ is part of a series of exhibitions at the Jameel Library that invites book artists, librarians and publishers to reimagine the library through curated displays and reading lists. Each iteration becomes a library within the library, offering new ways to encounter collections, ideas and practices of reading.

Taking Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1981 essay “World-Making” as its point of entry, the exhibition begins with the idea of a world already here, already made, and the work of remaking it from within. On these terms, the exhibition assembles a record of how Khaleeji women have produced, published, and circulated their own work: books, periodicals, ephemera, oral histories, and independent and experimental publications. Much of this material has never been formally collected, and a substantial portion goes on public view here for the first time. 

Working materials, including drafts, artists’ prototypes, dummy books, collages and projects-in-progress, are placed alongside finished works. Both are presented as primary documents, with attention given to the distance between them: the processes, decisions and possibilities that lie between a work in progress and its final form.

Join the Jameel Library for the accompanying programme: 

Archival Gaps: Memory, History, and World-Making

October 8, 2026
7–8pm

Jood AlThukair and the Jameel Library team kick off with  a conversation exploring the ideas that shape ‘At the Edge of Renewal’. Taking gaps as part of history rather than spaces outside it, the panel considers how absence is produced, how memory persists beyond institutional records, and how alternative archival practices can open possibilities for world-making.

RSVP here.

Under the Namsiyya: Stories, Textiles, and Other Woven Things with Khunfus Publishing House

October 9, 2026
6–8 pm

Khunfus Publishing House co-founders Maria Alem and Lama Alem hold a reading of The Namsiyya, followed by a collective quilt-making exercise inspired by textiles and the memories they hold. 

Through writing exercises and conversation, participants will weave memories, stories, and ideas of the present and future into a collective work.

RSVP here.

Experimental Earth with Maitha Ali

October 10, 2026
3–7 pm

 Artist Maitha Ali performs a group reading of the Arabic script for Experimental Earth: Technoflora Series, exploring ideas of futurity, liberation, magical realism, and more-than-human life. The reading will then move into a rapid-fire staging of the play, with each participant taking on the role of a telecom palm tree rooted in their own locality and context.

RSVP here.

About

Founded in 2026 by Jood AlThukair, the Khaleeji Women’s Library & Archive (KWLA) is a community-led travelling library, research lab, and alternative archival practice dedicated to the work and knowledge produced by women in and around the Gulf. Its collection brings academic research alongside independent oral histories, publications, artistic practices, and everyday records, including material that has remained outside institutional collections.

KWLA attends to how movement, labour and belonging shape women’s lives and the records they leave. Its collection is developed through consent, with contributors retaining agency over how their materials are described and circulated. KWLA operates through reading rooms, exhibitions and research projects. ‘At the Edge of Renewal’ is its first long-term institutional exhibition.

Jood AlThukair is a researcher tracing oral narratives, women’s memory practices, and the shifting ecologies of the desert. Working across (anti)archives through bilingual and ethno-poetic methods, she explores how stories endure, erode and reassemble. She is also a Rhodes Scholar (2022) and holds an MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation from the University of Oxford.

Khunfus is a publishing house based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They produce print books that bend form and genre through rich storytelling, bold aesthetics and exquisite craftsmanship. Khunfus nurtures a care-centered approach to publishing that prioritises thoughtful processes and craftsmanship throughout the production cycle; from writing to illustration, design and print. Its process draws inspiration from slow practices–ith each book, Khunfus untangles and weaves narratives; composts old traditions and sows new ones; ferments ideas and layers voices.

Lama Alem is the co-founder of Khunfus Publishing and author of The Book of Rajab. Lama holds a BA in Literature and Creative Writing from Franklin University, Switzerland. 

Maria Alem is the co-founder of Khunfus Publishing and editor of a number of titles, including The Book of Rajab. She is also an independent advisor, researcher, programmer, and writer working across the arts and culture sector with institutions, including the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, Art Jameel, the French Embassy, The Islamic Manuscript Association, and Maghras. Her academic background sits at the intersection of philosophy, Middle Eastern studies, museology, and the environmental humanities.

Maitha Ali is an artist, theatermaker, and art educator from Sharjah, working between Abu Dhabi and London. She has an academic background in Political Science, Public Policy, and Visual, Material & Museum Anthropology from NYU Abu Dhabi and the University of Oxford. She is viscerally drawn to enchantment and bewilderment as two ends of a spectrum; two feelings that manifest in the pluriversality of religious expression, marginality, human and more-than-human conviviality, and the built environment of cities and their monuments.