Threads: The Art Exchange is pleased to present By All Means Necessary, a solo show by Dubai-based artist Laila Masri, curated by Sydney Frakes. 

In her most ambitious body of work to date, Masri charts an intimate topography of healing, heritage, and the boundless nature of the creative psyche. Through a compelling synthesis of abstract and figurative mark-making paintings and works on paper, Masri invites viewers into the interior circuitry of her mind — a space at once vulnerable, resolute, and radically free. The exhibition’s title, By All Means Necessary, signals a determined ethos: to pursue artistic and personal liberation without compromise. This urgency is mirrored in Masri’s layered visual language, one that resists aesthetic containment and embraces multiplicity in color, scale, and form. Her canvases pulse with gestural dynamism, navigating the tension between chaos and clarity, fragility and endurance.

Masri’s recent journey off medication intersects poignantly with her ongoing mapping of Palestinian heritage. This convergence between mental wellness and cultural lineage becomes a central axis in the deeply personal and conceptually rigorous show. The artist reflects on the anxiety of diasporic dislocation while simultaneously reclaiming agency through acts of making and unmaking. Threads are deconstructed, reconstructed, and woven anew, echoing a longing to reconnect with fragmented roots while acknowledging the impossibility of a fixed identity. “Freedom” emerges as both a visual and philosophical proposition throughout the exhibition. Masri renders thought patterns not as linear narratives but as evolving ecosystems — navigating between stability and disruption. Negative space becomes a vital presence, inviting viewers into moments of silence and reflection, while saturated passages of color embody emotional intensity and cognitive flux.