Crossing the Ascent: Her Excellency Hala Al Khalifa in Florence

The exhibition is part of a broader cultural diplomacy project with a clear objective: to build a lasting cultural bridge between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Florence. The initiative was conceived and developed by Mohamed Ogbi, a cultural developer, strategist, and creative leader whose career unites corporate innovation and cultural vision. Over the course of 70 international projects across 23 sectors, he has cultivated a multidisciplinary approach shaped by his studies in economics, psychology, and communication. At its heart lies the conviction that art can serve as both a spiritual and social architecture.

From this belief stems his vision of diplomacy. For him, the encounter between peoples reaches its deepest form through art, where nations meet beyond protocol in a shared language of beauty, memory, and meaning. Thus, an artist from the Gulf enters Florence as the voice of a centuries-old dialogue between civilizations. Florence is a natural partner for a project of this ambition. For six centuries, the city has thrived on exchanges of ideas, pigments, patronage, and people. Crossing the Ascent: The Weight of Light extends that ancient Florentine vocation eastward to the Arabian Gulf.

«Cultures exist to unite us, with integrity and respect. Communicating across cultures through art is the purest form of communication we have, because art speaks to everyone, everywhere» – Mohamed Ogbi told us.

At the center of this crossing stands Her Excellency Hala Al Khalifa, an artist whose path has navigated between the studio, the classroom, and state institutions. In 2020, Italy conferred upon her a prestigious honor: the Order of the Star. Trained across two continents – in the United States (Boston) and the United Kingdom – she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Boston in 1999, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in London in 2002. She went on to teach art at various institutions, including the University of Bahrain, and held several positions within the arts departments of cultural institutions, tasked with promoting the development of Bahrain’s artistic scene.

In 2015, she completed a significant artist residency project in Doha. Throughout her career, she has participated in local, regional, and international exhibitions as both an organizer and an artist. Her works are held in public collections including the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, the Bahrain National Museum, the Saudi Art Council, and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. Visual arts, culture, education, and museums: these are the passions that thread through her entire journey. In Florence, they meet a city built on those very same four pillars.

The title encompasses two distinct movements. Crossing is horizontal: a passage from one shore to another, from the Gulf to Tuscany. Ascent is vertical: a surge, an effort, a tension moving upward. The paintings suggest that moving forward is rarely a linear rise; more often, it is a sideways crossing against the current. It is a profoundly Florentine idea. Here, light has never been mere ornament; it has been simultaneously theology, science, and ambition. An exhibition about the weight of light enters a long Florentine dialogue and brings to it a new voice.

The exhibition gathers a new body of work: large canvases presented alongside a series of circular paintings. Al Khalifa has always described her practice as born of tension rather than quietude. These works were created during a season when the sky above her homeland could no longer be taken for granted, yet she did not step away from the easel. As the curatorial text states, the weight is everything pressing in from the outside; the light is everything she refused to relinquish.

In the large canvases, bridges arch over still waters, while domes and towers emerge from washes of pink and dusty blue. In one sweeping panorama, the river and rooftops of Florence surface and dissolve—a silent dialogue between the artist and the city welcoming her today. The circular paintings, by contrast, gather inward. Some, executed on gold grounds, harbor ribs and vertebrae, shells and seed pods, and the woven fish traps that dot the coast of her Gulf. If the canvases look out at the architecture of a city, these paintings look inside the architecture of a life.

Light binds the two series together. Al Khalifa’s blues deepen until they hold a weight; her gold neither gleams nor decorates, but settles like something hard-earned. The artwork presents itself not as mere survival, but as defiance: proof that under the heaviest sky, an artist can still answer force with form.

Aria Art Gallery on Borgo Santi Apostoli – whose exhibitions FUL Magazine has often covered – serves as a partner in this cultural bridge between Bahrain and Florence. As one of the Florentine galleries most open to the international scene, Aria grew out of an idea by philosopher and entrepreneur Elio d’Anna, author of works published worldwide, including The School for Gods and The Technology of the Dreamer.

His principles gave shape to the Aria Foundation, which guides the selection and promotion of the gallery’s artists. Today directed by Antonio Budetta, the gallery focuses its research on new opportunities within contemporary collecting.

The gallery was founded in 2007 in Pietrasanta, the Versilian town of marble and bronze that has long been home to great sculptors. In 2009, it relocated its primary venue to Florence, setting up inside an ancient courtyard steps away from the Ponte Vecchio, complete with a botanical garden dating back to 1534. Visitors cross an ancient tropical garden to reach an early 20th-century exhibition space, making a short journey from past to present.

Aria boasts a long tradition of international openness, having hosted solo exhibitions by American artists Carole Feuerman and Roxanne Lowit, as well as Chinese artists Zhuang Hong Yi and Sheng Qi. Exhibitions by Hassan Hajjaj, Omar Imam, and Tanya Habjouqa turned focus toward the contemporary Middle East, while Turkish masters Burhan Doğançay and İrfan Önürmen exhibited here for the first time in Italy. In tandem, the gallery supports Italian artists at home and abroad, with a particular focus on young talent. With Crossing the Ascent, Aria extends this international commitment to the Kingdom of Bahrain, contributing as a partner to an enduring dialogue between two cultures.

For FUL, being invited to this initiative meant much more than reporting on an exhibition opening. Initiatives of this scope are rare. Their value extends beyond a single evening into what endures: lasting bonds between institutions, between nations, and between the cultures they safeguard.

When the courtyard doors open on November 5th, the ancient garden will guide visitors, as it always does, from one century to another. This time, it will also carry them from one shore to another – from the Arabian Gulf to the banks of the Arno.

Florence taught the world to paint the light. With Crossing the Ascent, it stands ready to discover how others know how to carry its weight. It is only natural, then, that an exhibition dedicated to the “weight of light” opens right here.

Crossing the Ascent: The Weight of Light,

Aria Art Gallery, Florence

from November 5 to December 12

Opening hours: Monday – Saturday, 10:30 am – 1:30 pm | 3:30 pm – 7:30 pm