The body of work produced for Terra Un(firma) an online exhibition by Tabari Artspace art gallery was divided into two segments, The Living and The Land, which took the artist's personal narratives and feminist outlook as a starting point to explore issues faced by women, across cultures, in the contemporary moment.
The Living was a reflection upon the artist's complex and conflicting internal (psychological) and external (social) worlds. As a dual marginal existing within a liminal space, Shihadi navigated the clashes between individuality and responsibility that comprised contemporary womanhood in her society and extended towards women globally, who faced discrimination, marginalization, identity crisis, and other multi-faceted gendered issues.
The selected works for The Land turned towards the physical space and natural environment as a site of connection, displacement, and contestation, which the artist conflated with notions of the home, family, and collective identity. Each large-scale work selected for the exhibition had been painstakingly produced over several months. Shihadi's work oscillated between classical-figurative realism, which dutifully captured and recorded that which surrounded her, and fantastical surrealism that drew from the artist's preoccupations with mysticism. Shihadi employed a dramatic approach to hyperrealism sketching, using chiaroscuro to form a magical reality that blended both fiction and fantasy. Symbolism - religious, ritualistic, political, and cultural - was interwoven into much of Shihadi's work, forming complex layers that the viewer had to unpack in order to absorb deeper meanings.
