Palma: The Conference of the Palm Trees marks the first presentation in Singapore and Asia of Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (b. 1983, Les Sables-d’Olonne), a French and Moroccan artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. Over the past two decades, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou has developed a poetic and critical visual language addressing questions of identity, hybridity, belief systems, and the politics of representation.
For his inaugural presentation at Cuturi Gallery, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou presents a body of work previously shown internationally and here recontextualised within Singapore’s cultural, historical, and ecological landscape. The project draws inspiration from The Conference of the Birds, the 12th-century Sufi allegory by Farid ud-Din Attar, reimagined through the figure of the palm tree, one of the world’s oldest cultivated plant species.
Presented in Singapore, where palm trees are integral to the city’s urban identity and “garden city” image, the exhibition introduces a critical distance from their decorative and symbolic function. Through drawings, sculptures, photographs, and installations, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou isolates and re-frames the palm as both subject and archive, revealing tensions between nature and control, visibility and erasure, ecology and exploitation.
Venue: Cuturi Gallery, 61 Aliwal Street, Singapore 199937
When: 7 Mar - 9 May 2026,
By: Cuturi Gallery
