• Thomas Dillon: The Raw and the Cooked

    Opera Gallery DIFC, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    This is Dillon's first solo exhibition in Dubai; and it is claimed to be a milestone in the artist’s career, featuring a body of work conceived and created specifically for this show. In Claude Lévi-Strauss’s influential text of the same [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Talal Al Najjar: Mesh & Mayhem

    Tabari Artspace Gate Village Level 2, DIFC, Dubai

    Talal Al Najjar’s works feel very contemporary, not just in his use of materials and technologuy but also in his concerns and ambitions. He produces sculpture, video, sound, CGI animation, painting, and installation, in addition to writing and curation; his [... more]

  • Nja Mahdaoui: the Choreographer of Letters

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    This focused retrospective surveys over six decades of practice by the Tunisian multimedia artist Nja Mahdaoui, an influential figures in Arab modern art who repurposed Arabic calligraphy into a visual and abstract contemporary art form. This show, o-curated by Michaela [... more]

  • Constructing the Orient: Fragments of a Western Dream

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    Drawn from the private collection of Bassam Said Freiha plus key loans from the Ary Jan Gallery, this exhibition of Orientalist works  unfolds across five thematic sections, each focusing on a central motif within Orientalist visual language and examining how [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Nat Bowen: Chromology

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    Known for works of glossy, abstract resin poured on to acrylic, Bowen creates luminous, aqueous fields that transform colour into a language of emotion and presence. With this show, says the gallery, "viewers are invited into an intimate space of [... more]

    Free
  • Daniel Arsham: What Remains

    Perrotin Gate Village Building 5, DIFC, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    A solo show by the American artist Daniel Arsham, known for his works of 'fictional archaeology' expressed through sculpture, architecture, drawing, and film – what he calls “future relics of the present.” Arsham will transform the gallery into a sonic [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Monif Ajaj: Shams

    Fann à Porter The Workshop, Villa 45, St. 23b, off Al Wasl Road (opposite Box Park), Jumeirah 2, Dubai

    New ink drawings on paper and acrylic paintings on canvas from the French-based Syrian artist that offer viewers a journey through colour, symbolism, and contemplation. These are works that "reflect on the mystical power of nature, its geometry and order, [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Heritage, Memory & The Body

    Artbooth Gallery Centro Capital Center, Al Khaleej Al Arabi Street, Abu Dhabi

    A group exhibition for four distinguished Palestinian women artists – Rania Amoudi, Dina Matar, Fatima Abu Rumi, and Marwa Alnajjar – that offers a powerful counterpoint to static portrayals of femininity and nationhood. Grounded in place yet transcending borders, the [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Banafsheh Hemmati: Body Geometry

    Satellite Gallery DIFC, Dubai

    The first solo exhibition in the UAE for the Tehran-based artist-designer presents a collection of the artist’s jewellery and wearable sculptures. Body Geometry is a research-based project, where the design process is presented as well as the finished pieces. As [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Edges of Perception

    Waddington Custot Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    A group show of paintings, sculptures, and photographs by a number of well-known contemporary artists that explore contrasts of material, form, and colour. The artists: Kenia Almaraz Murillo Nick Brandt Ian Davenport Hubert Le Gall Umberto Mariani Landon Metz Marc [... more]

    Free
  • Fertile Dreams

    Tabari Artspace Gate Village Level 2, DIFC, Dubai

    The group show brings together artists from the MENA region and its diaspora whose practices engage fertility as a generative force tied to questions of origin, transformation, and the cycles that govern land and self. Across drawing, painting, ceramics, textiles, [... more]

    Free
  • Printed Matter

    Fann à Porter The Workshop, Villa 45, St. 23b, off Al Wasl Road (opposite Box Park), Jumeirah 2, Dubai

    A group exhibition of photography and mixed media works by El3attar Film Collective – Cynthia Zahar, Georges Yammine, and Mohammad Al Hawajri. Through preserving and reconfiguring found materials, stories, and images, each artist tackles themes of memory, war, and change. [... more]

    Free
  • Rays, Ripples, Residue

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This major exhibition marks the ten-year anniversary of 421 Arts Campus via a chance to reflect on emergent artistic practices in the UAE, their possibilities, and challenges for the future. Featuring video, performance, installation, and multimedia works, it invites conversations [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Abdelkader Benchamma: Rumors from the Skies

    Gallery Isabelle Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    For his third solo exhibition here, the French-Algerian artist has taken inspiration from Kometenbuch (The Comet Book), a 16th-century Flemish treatise depicting comets and fantastical apparitions; Benchamma suggests how astronomy and astrology, science and folklore, continue to overlap in shaping [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Mahmoud El Safadi: Personal Sea

    Gallery Isabelle Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Exhibiting for the first time in Dubai, Lebanese artist Mahmoud El Safadi is showing a collection of miniature paintings on playing cards, a series of works that reflect on the Mediterranean as a site of memory, inheritance, and continuity – [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Sophie-Yen Bretez: The Unsaid Remains Remembered

    JD Malat Gallery ACT 2 Tower, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Blvd 13A ,Downtown Dubai, Dubai

    A solo exhibition by Paris-based artist Sophie-Yen Bretez for a new body of work that captures moments when one space becomes another, when times overlap, and when memory persists as life shifts forward. This “dramaturgy of passage” is expressed through [... more]

  • Hussein Nassereddine: You, Only, Inhabit My Years

    Alserkal Arts Foundation Common Room Warehouse 51, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    Artist and writer Hussein Nassereddine, the Alserkal Arts Foundation's Fall 2025 resident, presents an afternoon of film and reading around poetics of time, repetition, and the limits of language. He will present his recent video work You, Only, Inhabit My [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Afra Al Dhaheri: Restless Circle

    Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mureijah Square Sharjah

    A selection of works by Afra Al Dhaheri that explore the structural effects of tension, repetition and time provides Sharjah Art Foundation's first show of Autumn. "Working with materials such as cotton rope, fabric, cement and hair, the artist emphasises [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Marwan Bassiouni: New Western Views (Preview)

    Lawrie Shabibi Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    This first solo exhibition in the region for Bassiouni offers a first look at an ongoing international project that reframes landscape photography through the lens of lived Muslim presence in the contemporary West. Each of these photographs – taken from [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Mona Al Khaja: Caravan of Colors

    Aisha Alabbar Gallery Warehouse C19, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    A retrospective celebrating over four decades of work by the Sharjah-born artist. It traces Mona Al Khaja’s journey from her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo to her continued exploration of abstraction, symbolism, and colou, featuring works [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Lala Rukh: The importance of staying quiet

    Grey Noise Unit 24 Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The first exhibition of the new iteration of The importance of staying quiet, a survey of Pakistani art, features photographic archives from Lala Rukh’s years at the University of Chicago (1974-76). It includes early works that carry a cinematic sense [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Wassef Boutros-Ghali: A Retrospective (1965-2016)

    Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    In the canvases of Wassef Boutros-Ghali, colours informed by a knowledge of unrelenting Mediterranean sunlight flood the flat plane of the canvas; architectural forms emerge, collide and re-engineer themselves without a narrative. Boutros-Ghali’s art speaks to the pure and unrestricted [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Morteza Khosravi: The Floating Table

    Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Influenced by the likes of Lucian Freud and Egon Schiele, Khosravi's drawings and paintings suggest that he's looking for artistic ideas – "for him, how to encounter pieces is important than pieces itself". But does have a characteristic style of [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Katya Emelyanova: Elevated State

    Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The practice of Moscow-based Katya Emelyanova explores the phenomenology of aesthetic experience, aiming to evoke emotion, foster direct engagement, and maintain accessibility. Drawing from fauvism and abstraction, her vibrant forms begin as abstract concepts that gradually evolve into refined, expressive [... more]

    Free
  • Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: The Bouquet and the Wreath

    Jameel Arts Centre Al Jaddaf, Dubai

    The acclaimed Thai artist’s first international large-scale survey exhibition brings together works from the last 45 years alongside new commissions. Including performance, video and installations plus some large-scale sculptures not seen since the 1990s, the exhibition fills the indoor galleries, [... more]

    Free
  • Majda Abdulshakour and Noura Ali-Ramahi: All is Here

    La Galerie, Alliance Française Dubai Alliance Française Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s reflection that “It is here that we must love. All is here,” this exhibition of painting and sculpture invites viewers to rediscover paradise not as a distant place, but as something that exists within our [... more]

  • Tim Kent: Horsepower

    JD Malat Gallery ACT 2 Tower, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Blvd 13A ,Downtown Dubai, Dubai

    A solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Tim Kent that examines the historical and cultural significance of the horse. Working across large-scale painted interiors, landscapes, and invented worlds, Kent transforms historical reference into contemporary compositions that hover between reality and imagination; [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY The Narrative of Decline

    Carbon 12 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Bernhard Buhmann curates this group show based on the idea that plunging downwards is both terrifying and liberating – the gallery quotes Andrea Roelig: "We stand between death and life, and decline is dangerously enticing because it also carries an [... more]

    Free
  • Richard Hearns: Threshold

    Artbooth Gallery Centro Capital Center, Al Khaleej Al Arabi Street, Abu Dhabi

    A solo exhibition by the Lebanese-Irish painter, born in Beirut and adopted into Ireland to bear a dual heritage that shapes his artistic identity. This, his first solo exhibition in the UAE, presents a new body of work that reflects [... more]

    Free
  • Lydia Nakashima Degarrod and Susan Ossman: Projects of Art Ethnography

    NYUAD Project Space NYUAD Campus, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    This exhibition brings together works by two artist-anthropologists with practices on the boundaries between scholarship and art. Their projects invite viewers to reflect on migration, memory, identity, and the ways knowledge takes shape across bodies, materials, and stories. The exhibition [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Elias Izoli: Inside Out ‘25

    Ayyam Gallery B11, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    After a long break from painting, Izoli has returned with a new body of work centred around "the circus of life" – Izoli uses the circus as a metaphor for the unpredictability and complexity of life as a Syrian citizen. [... more]

    Free
  • Art in Motion

    Souk Madinat Jumeirah Dubai

    A seven-day live art "experience" (7-13 November, 5-9pm) lets visitors watch and take part in the creative process as a different artist each day runs a live demonstration and participative workshop. The artists: 7 Nov Azza Al Qubaisi Express Yourself [... more]

    Free
  • Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art

    VCUarts Qatar Education City, Doha, Qatar

    The theme for VCUarts Qtara's 11th biennial Symposium on Islamic Art, Islam and Visual Culture in Contemporary Asia, aims for a fresh look at how Muslim communities across South, Southeast, and East Asia are engaging with Islamic art. The co-chairs, [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Ruba Salameh: Refined Compositions

    Zawyeh Gallery Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    In the face of genocide, Palestinian artist Ruba Salameh finds her way forward through abstract painting – weaving her own narrative while connecting across generations to the work of art historian and artist Kamal Boullata. This exhibition reflects primarily on [... more]

    Free
  • Marwan Sahmani: Rupture Into Light

    Farjam Foundation Gate Avenue 3, GF-97, DIFC, Dubai

    A solo exhibition of works (some never seen before) by the Lebanese artist "whose works emerge from the intersection of identity, contradiction and modernisation" as the gallery has it. Born in the 1970s in war-torn Beirut, Sahmani embodies Lebanon’s complex [... more]

  • Dhai Dubai

    Al Wasl Plaza Expo City, Dubai

    Dhai Dubai, Dubai Culture's light art exhibition, has a very specific remit: just seven works but seven artists, all Emirati. The theme for this second edition of the show is ‘Light Influences Life’. The artists represent an interesting selection, and [... more]

    Free
  • Łiljana Burćul: Lilium Art

    Renaissance Business Bay Hotel Al Abraj Street, Marasi Drive, Business Bay, Dubai

    Paintings on silk by the Serbian artist known internationally as Lily. Her process combines pigment, water, alcohol, and salt to produce layers of colour and depth; on to these surfaces, Lily adds Swarovski® crystals, fine glass, quartz, and gold, "giving [... more]

    Free
  • Banksy

    Champop Gallery ACT ONE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Blvd, Opera District, Dubai

    Paris-based CHAMPOP Galerie opened an outpost in Downtown Dubai this summer. It specialises in pop art and street art, and its first full-scale exhibition in Dubai features Banksy. On show are several originals plus screenprints and limited editions; the former, [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Whispers of the Past

    Sotheby’s Dubai DIFC Gate Village Building No3, Unit 01, Level B2, Dubai

    This Aisha Alabbar Gallery exhibition in collaboration with Sotheby’s Middle East features five artists whose works explore the quiet persistence of memory and cultural inheritance – Najat Makki, Khalid Al Banna, Sara Al Haddad, Sara Aref Ahli, and Samar Hejazi. [... more]

    Free
  • Manar Abu Dhabi 2025

    [various Abu Dhabi locations] Abu Dhabi

    Manar Abu Dhabi returns for its second edition with the theme The Light Compass, presenting 19 newly commissioned light-based artworks by Emirati and international artists – including some very big names: Abdulla Almulla (UAE) Ammar Al Attar (UAE) Christian Brinkmann [... more]

    Free
  • Tor Seidel: Riposte

    XVA Gallery Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood, Bur Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Tor Siedel explores how ‘vandalism’ by environmental activists in triptychs that consider whether these attacks can also be considered performative acts of art. He focuses on the protagonists' actionism, the shock or entertainment value for visitors, and the professional dissemination [... more]

    Free
  • Aliyah Alawadhi: Girl Parts

    Bayt AlMamzar House 2, 26 Street, Al Mamzar, Dubai

    "Childhood is a half-remembered taste: sweet, sticky, and sometimes spoiled." In Girl Parts, her first solo exhibition, Aliyah Alawadhi expresses this residue in paint – bodies shimmering in pinks and creams, mouths agape, devouring and dreaming. Says the gallery: "These [... more]

    Free
  • Salma Dib: Marks of Return

    Aisha Alabbar Gallery Warehouse C19, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    Drawing from the charged visual language of street walls in Palestine in this, her first solo exhibition in the UAE, Salma Dib transforms those surfaces of resistance into layered compositions that speak of loss, resilience, and collective memory. Her works [... more]

    Free
  • Gil Heitor Cortesão: All That Is Solid

    CARBON 12 17th Street, Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Gil Heitor Cortesão's fifth solo show at CARBON 12 (it is also the gallery's 100th exhibition) presents a suite of large and small works extending his investigation into the fragile perceptive systems and architectures of modernity. Working with oils on [... more]

    Free
  • Ali Kaaf: The Fire’s Edge 

    Ayyam Gallery B11, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Ali Kaaf’s first solo exhibition at Ayyam Gallery features his seminal body of work, the Rift series, alongside selected works from his Helmet and Ras Ras series. The Fire’s Edge evokes the fragile threshold where ancestral practices meet modern erasure [... more]

    Free
  • Mohammed Joha: Houselessness

    Zawyeh Gallery Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    In his latest work, Palestinian artist Mohammed Joha redefines collage as "an architecture of rupture and reassembly, both a method and a metaphor". His works bring together scraps of fabric, paper, cardboard, plastic and other salvaged materials, textures pulled from [... more]

    Free
  • Ali Kaaf: The Fire’s Edge

    Ayyam Gallery B11, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The artist’s first solo show at Ayyam Gallery features Kaaf’s seminal body of work from his Rift, Helmet and Ras Ras series. The Fire’s Edge evokes the fragile threshold where ancestral practices meet modern erasure, the line between scorched earth [... more]

    Free
  • Kamrooz Aram: Domestic Compositions

    Green Art Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    A solo exhibition by Kamrooz Aram. The artist’s practice integrates sculpture, painting, and architecture, creating a context for viewing cultural artefacts in a way that brings them back into the present. At the centre of five collages, for instance, is [... more]

    Free
  • By the Movement of All Things

    Lawrie Shabibi Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    A group exhibition curated by Hamzeh Alfarahneh of South African curatorial firm Art(Advisory) and featuring works by Hamra Abbas (Pakistan), Diana Al-Hadid (Syria-USA), Timo Nasseri (Iran-Germany), and four South Africans – Igshaan Adams, Moshekwa Langa, James Webb, and Bronwyn Katz. [... more]

    Free
  • Fereydoun Ave, Raana Farnoud, Shaqayeq Arabi: IMPROVISATIONS

    Gallery Isabelle Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The artists in this group show have distinct visual languages that do find commonalities: they "transform the familiar through acts of care, attention, and intuitive play ... a shared attentiveness to what is provisional, such as a line that wavers, [... more]

    Free