Malik Thomas Jalil Kydd at CARBON 12 Dubai: Painting Desire and Divinity on Raw Silk

Silk is not a neutral surface. It drinks pigment, shifts with the light, carries centuries of trade routes and ritual use, and sags or ripples wherever it is stitched. That is precisely why Malik Thomas Jalil Kydd paints on it. His new exhibition, Malik Thomas Jalil Kydd’s “As I Bask in Your Light, it Seeps to My Soul” at CARBON 12 in Dubai, opens on 16 November 2026 and runs until 5 January 2027 — his second solo show with the Alserkal Avenue gallery, and one that promises some of his most ambitious work on the material so far.

Who is Malik Thomas Jalil Kydd?

Kydd was born in 1995 in Kent, in the south-east of England, and according to his gallery CV he now lives and works between Amman and London. CARBON 12 describes his way of looking as shaped by a mixed Iraqi-Scottish heritage — a detail worth holding on to, because the question of where a body belongs runs quietly through his imagery.

His training is unusual for a painter. After a foundation year at Central Saint Martins (2013–14), he studied Fashion and Textiles Design with a specialism in print at London College of Fashion (2014–18), later completing The Drawing Intensive at the Royal Drawing School in 2023. In 2021 he was a finalist in the debut category of Fashion Trust Arabia in Doha. The textile education matters: Kydd does not treat cloth as a support to be hidden under paint, but as an active participant in the picture.

Since then his work has travelled widely. His CV lists group exhibitions at the Diriyah Biennale Foundation (Bodies as Landscapes, 2022), the Sungkok Museum of Art in Seoul (2023), Studio 23 in Ghent (2024), Galerie NIL in Paris and Tabari Artspace at Villa Cramer in Milan (both 2025), alongside residencies in Riyadh and on the Tuscan coast. His first solo show with CARBON 12, Garden of Murmurs, took place in 2025, and his work is in the collection of ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai.

Painting on stitched silk

The process is slow and physical. Kydd hand-dyes raw silk and cotton — his CV notes that in Amman he uses sage, a local herb, as a dye — and then stitches panels together before working across them in paint and charcoal softened with oil. The seams remain visible; they become part of the drawing. The gallery frames silk in his hands as both subject and symbol, standing for migration, sensuality and the sacred at once.

His figures are large — he speaks of working at “angel scale” — and luminous, drawn from personal encounters, life-drawing sessions and devotional imagery. They are often set in landscapes that recall arid valleys and heavily salted waters, a geography that will feel familiar to anyone who knows the landscapes around Amman. The mood, as CARBON 12 describes it, sits between melancholy and wonder, with intimacy treated as a form of reverence.

What the new exhibition contains

The gallery presents the show as a body of work made since Garden of Murmurs and as a marked step forward, organised around two intertwined themes: desire and divinity. The work chosen to announce it, Bather Basked in Moonlight (2026), is an oil on raw silk measuring 240 × 140 cm — taller than any visitor, which suits the idea of figures that hover somewhere between human and celestial.

The bather is one of the oldest motifs in Western painting, from Renaissance nymphs to Cézanne’s geometric nudes. Placing that figure in moonlight, on dyed silk, and tying it to devotion rather than mere display, Kydd seems to be reclaiming the motif for a different kind of looking — tender rather than possessive. CARBON 12 has not yet published the full list of works, their number or any curatorial credit, so the rest of the exhibition will be revealed at the opening.

CARBON 12 and the Alserkal context

CARBON 12 occupies Unit 37 on Alserkal Avenue, the converted warehouse district in Al Quoz that has become the centre of Dubai’s contemporary gallery scene. A November opening places the show in the heart of the UAE’s winter art season, when collectors from across the Gulf and beyond spend time in the city. For a gallery that has supported Kydd since his first solo exhibition in 2025, a second show the following year signals real commitment.

Why it matters

For collectors, Kydd represents a generation of artists whose practice moves comfortably between fine art and fibre art, between London and the Levant. Works on silk raise practical questions — about framing, light exposure and conservation — that are worth discussing with the gallery, but they also offer a presence that canvas rarely matches. For painters, the lesson is in the method: the surface itself carries meaning before a single mark is made, and the seam can be as expressive as the brushstroke.

More broadly, the show belongs to a strong current in contemporary painting that is returning to the figure through tenderness rather than irony. Kydd’s refusal to fix a single interpretation — the gallery says he favours feeling, carried through gesture, line and the memory held in fabric — makes his work an open invitation rather than a statement.

Visiting information

CARBON 12, Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai. 16 November 2026 – 5 January 2027. Opening reception: Monday 16 November, 18:00–21:00. Open Monday to Saturday, 11:30–19:00. Telephone +971 4 340 60 16, email [email protected].

See the official exhibition page, the artist’s page at CARBON 12, our exhibition listing, and more Dubai openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.