• RUSTING ECHOES

    NYUAD Arts Centre Project Space

    Works by Yoshi (Aisha Al Ali), Ammar Al Banna, Ahmed Al Kuwaiti and Shaikha Al Shamsi. The theme is time as both a material and emotional presence, expressed through processes of transformation, memory, repetition, and decay – so time not [ ... ]

    Free
  • Yuyu Zhitong: Serendipity

    Volery Gallery Maze Tower - 5201, Dubai International Financial Center, Dubai

    The debut solo exhibition in the Middle East for the Chinese-born London-based artist, known for her luscious sweeps of colour and a mordant wit (“Good Girls Go To Heaven, Cool Girls Go Everywhere”). This show presents a new body of [ ... ]

    Free
  • Digital Art: Printed Works

    Kutubna Cultural Center Madina Avenues 17, Nadd Al Hamar, Dubai

    A group show – 27 artists, 35 works – of prints from digital art that represent “a kaleidoscopic range of subjects and sentiments reflecting the complexity and richness of being human today … Rendered through digital tools, in some instances [ ... ]

    Free
  • Urdu Worlds

    Ishara Art Foundation Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    A contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language: according to Ishara, "the show explores how language provides the tools with which we create and shape our internal ‘worlds’. Words, rather than simply describing our surroundings, give rise to our [ ... ]

    Free
  • Echoes in Colors

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

    A group show in the Renaissance Business Bay’s lobby for “a diverse roster of Dubai based artists” that is “defined by variety rather than a single style" and linked “through colour, emotion, and storytelling”. To 27 January.

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Lala Rukh II: The importance of staying quiet

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

    The first part of this series, Lala Rukh I, presented a selection of photographs from the artist’s archives during her years at the University of Chicago (1974-76). Its speculative framework helped us to stage the evolution of Lala’s photographic sensibility, [ ... ]

    Free
  • Kais Salman: Remnants

    New work by Kais Salman, who "places his audience among ruins ... his recent body of work acting as a pile of forgotten images buried beneath decades of historical buildup ... Faces emerge through Salman’s energetic brushwork, only to fade [ ... ]

  • Anuar Khalifi: Remember the Future

    The Third Line Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The third Third Line solo exhibition by Spanish-Moroccan artist Anuar Khalifi comprises a new body of large-scale paintings and works on paper that represent an evolution in Khalifi’s practice, with increasingly intricate and carefully composed settings expanding the pictorial field. [ ... ]

    Free
  • Alia Hussain Lootah: In the Space of Becoming

    Aisha Alabbar Gallery Warehouse C19, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    In this new body of work – paintings, drawings, and sculpture – Alia Lootah continues an exploration of how form moves, shifts, and transforms ("a form is never finished, only paused"). Shapes stretch, collapse, and reappear altered, "existing in a [ ... ]

    Free
  • Anahita Razmi: The Task of the Mythologist

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

    Anahita Razmi's video, installation and performance works usually focus on issues of identity and gender and examine processes of cultural appropriation in which the meanings of existing images, artefacts and thus identities are put into question by situating them in [ ... ]

    Free
  • :mentalKLINIK: Are You Human Enough

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

    Set within an environment of visual overload and compulsive accumulation, the work in this third solo exhibition at the gallery for the artist duo centres on the human figure at risk of dissolving into surface, interface, and pattern – a [ ... ]

    Free
  • Aïda Muluneh: This Bloom I Borrow

    Efiɛ Gallery 2 Al Khayat Art Avenue, First Al Khail Street, Dubai

    A new series of images by the Ethiopian art photographer, her second solo exhibition at the gallery. The show includes 10 works that have never been seen before, using techniques developed through Muluneh's recent residency at Efie. Muluneh has been [ ... ]

    Free
  • Saher Nassar: Chronicles from the Storm

    Zawyeh Gallery Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    In this new body of work, Nassar reflects on prolonged states of loss, endurance, and moral exhaustion, translating deeply personal and collective experiences across multiple mediums. Says the gallery: "Rather than seeking resolution or catharsis, the works dwell in a [ ... ]

    Free
  • Sarah McEneaney: Creative Non-Fiction

    Taymour Grahne Projects Warehouse 31A, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    For nearly five decades, Sarah McEneaney has devoted her practice to a singular theme, the meticulous chronicling of her own life. This exhibition presents a series of paintings that chart the latest moments and milestones in a life – domestic [ ... ]

  • John Dilg: Found and Lost

    Taymour Grahne Projects Warehouse 31A, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    The Iowa-based artist John Dilg represents scenic panoramas as earth-toned paintings that feel immediately familiar yet poignantly dreamlike. Having specialised in abstraction early in his career, Dilg’s evolution towards landscape painting retained an especial awareness of spatial relationships – "a [ ... ]

  • LAST CHANCE Ala Younis: Past of a Temporal Universe

    NYUAD Art Gallery Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This mid-career retrospective marks the first institutional survey in the region for Ala Younis. It includes archival installations, textiles, murals, mosaics, and drawings spanning the last two decades of her hybrid practice as an artist-researcher-curator. There will also be some [ ... ]

    Free
  • Picasso, the Figure

    Louvre Abu Dhabi Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    A landmark monographic exhibition that traces Picasso’s lifelong preoccupation with the human form. Included are more than 130 artworks from the Musée National Picasso-Paris and other institutions, as well as Louvre Abu Dhabi, DCT Abu Dhabi, and other regional collections [ ... ]

    General admission AED 70
  • Caty Cordahi: Dubai, from Dunes to Vibrant Crowds

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

    An expressionist exploration of the city that captures Dubai as it is felt, rather than as it is seen. "Through expressive brushstrokes, colour becomes a language, revealing the city’s complexity – its energy, diversity, and profound contradictions." To 5 February.

    Free
  • Brushstroke Brilliance 2.0

    Rixos The Palm Dubai East Crescent Plot 40, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai

    A two-week pop-up in the lobby of Rixos The Palm presented in collaboration with Art Factor UAE and BKR Events. It features 14 artists: Jasmine Mohammed Rizvi Bindu Krishnan Roy Varsha Saju Nair Anjini Prakash Laitu Ahmed Al Awadhi (Rukni) [ ... ]

    Free
  • Shamsa Al Omaira: Hard Like Tears, Soft Like Glass

    Iris Projects Studio 20, Madar 39, MiZa, Port Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    A solo exhibition for Shamsa Al Omaira, an Abu Dhabi based multidisciplinary artist and designer. Evocations of duality occupy a prominent position in her work; childhood bedding and memories of jelly desserts morph into soft-looking sculptures laced with hidden or overt [ ... ]

    Free
  • Juliet Makhlouf: Admiring Ancestors

    Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery Al Khayat Art Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai

    More than 30 new paintings, offering a comprehensive survey of the artist’s recent work. This show approaches ancestry as a living presence rather than a distant past, reflecting on civilizations whose surviving traces – clay tablets, systems of law and [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Mamluks: Legacy of an Empire

    Louvre Abu Dhabi Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    An exhibition on the rich heritage of the Mamluk Sultanate, a dynasty that ruled a vast expanse of territory encompassing the most significant Islamic holy sites for more than 250 years (1250–1517), with more than 270 works  gatheredfrom 34 museums [ ... ]

    General admission AED 65
  • LAST CHANCE 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 [ ... ]

  • LAST CHANCE Al Burda Exhibition: The Shape of Meaning

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    In response to the Nja Mahdaoui retrospective in the main gallery at BFAF, this exhibition presents loans from the Ministry of Culture’s Al Burda exhibitions from 2008 to 2023. Al Burda was/is an annual exhibition where contemporary artists engage with [ ... ]

    Free
  • Darvish: Enrapture

    Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    This exhibition is described by the gallery as “a visual dialogue, suspended between Occidental heritage and Oriental sensibilities” and “rooted in the belief that love is a direct conduit to the Divine – a state that dissolves societal constructs and [ ... ]

    Free
  • Ayad Alkadhi: Sunken Republic

    Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Based in New York, Alkadhi has academic degrees in art, engineering, and design – and as a result brings a multidisciplinary approach to a practice that engages with the cultural and political realities of global and Middle Eastern events. This [ ... ]

    Free
  • Bahar Sabzevari: Ancestral Algorithms

    Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Rooted in Indo-Persian mythology, Ancestral Algorithms feature a series of drawings, paintings, and sculptural works that merge organic and mechanical forms to reimagine the legendary Talking Tree (Derakht-e Sokhangoo) – a mythical being that could speak, listen, and connect the [ ... ]

    Free
  • Saif Azzuz: Invisible Fish

    Lawrie Shabibi Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    This first solo exhibition in the Middle East for the SF-based Libyan-Yurok artist takes its title from a poem by Joy Harjo, which considers cycles of transformation across land, water, and time, moving from submerged environments to human settlement and industrial [ ... ]

    Free
  • Past Through Here

    Maraya Art Centre Al Qasba, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

    A student-curated exhibition developed by students from the American University of Sharjah under the mentorship of Sheikh Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, Founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation, and drawing on works from Barjeel’s noted collection of modern and contemporary Arab [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Hussein Al Mohasen: The Truth

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

    New work from the Saudi artist, who has been exhibited all over the Middle East since 1999. His practice is shaped by poetry from the Arab world and "the complex intersections between modern spaces and personal freedoms"; he aims to [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Caty Cordahi: Dubai, from Dunes to Vibrant Crowds

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

    An expressionist exploration of the city that captures Dubai as it is felt, rather than as it is seen. "Through expressive brushstrokes, colour becomes a language, revealing the city’s complexity – its energy, diversity, and profound contradictions." To 5 February.

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Hybrid Vistas

    NIKA Project Space Unit 11 Al Khayat Avenue, 19th Street Road — Al Quoz 1, Dubai

    A group show with Adel Abidin, Daniele Genadry, Ali Kaeini, Katya Muromtseva, and Melissa Rios that explores "how landscape is transformed in an age of post-human thought, climate disruption, and hybrid perception ... This is a space where nature is [ ... ]

    Free
  • Huma Shoaib: Fractal

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

    Huma Shoaib has always been an interesting, thoughtful artist, creating patterns from sacred geometry and looking for analogies in life and nature. She often uses paper cut silhouettes layered with detailed graphite drawings that typically adds three-dimensional depth to otherwise [ ... ]

    Free
  • Abdelwahab Hawam: Solo Exhibition

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

    The debut exhibition in the UAE by the emerging Egyptian artist draws inspiration from Hawam's hometown of El Mahalla El Kubra in Gharbeya Governorate – its countryside, colours, and the faces of people who shaped his early life. Working in [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Leda Catunda: I like to like what others are liking

    Al Mureijah Square Sharjah

    The most comprehensive solo exhibition to date of Brazilian artist Leda Catunda outside her home country. Sharjah Art Foundation is presenting four decades of Catunda’s practice, tracing the transformation of her art from figurative painting to hybrid forms that explore [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Juliet Makhlouf: Admiring Ancestors

    Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery Al Khayat Art Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai

    More than 30 new paintings, offering a comprehensive survey of the artist’s recent work. This show approaches ancestry as a living presence rather than a distant past, reflecting on civilizations whose surviving traces – clay tablets, systems of law and [ ... ]

    Free
  • Jorge Tacla: Time the destroyer is time the preserver

    Al Mureijah Square Sharjah

    While Jorge Tacla was only an adolescent during the 1973 coup against Chile’s democratically-elected socialist president Salvador Allende, the upheaval left an irrevocable mark on his politics and practice. Titled after a line from a TS Eliot poem, Tacla’s "most [ ... ]

    Free
  • Ahaad Alamoudi: Sunkissed

    Al Mureijah Square Sharjah

    The motifs of the sun and its intense heat as well as the sand and its pervasive orange hue often serve to represent and condense the Gulf’s complex ecologies and aspirations. This selection of recent and newly commissioned works by [ ... ]

    Free
  • Noura Ali-Ramahi: I Am Not a Chair. Am I a Fox?

    Khawla Art Gallery Plaza 30, 12B Delma St., Abu Dhabi

    This solo show includes works created over several years, using acrylic, pastel, ink, charcoal, and found materials such as wood, fabric, and recycled objects. At the centre of the exhibition is the recurring image of the chair, appearing as a [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Yuyu Zhitong: Serendipity

    Volery Gallery Maze Tower - 5201, Dubai International Financial Center, Dubai

    The debut solo exhibition in the Middle East for the Chinese-born London-based artist, known for her luscious sweeps of colour and a mordant wit (“Good Girls Go To Heaven, Cool Girls Go Everywhere”). This show presents a new body of [ ... ]

    Free
  • Ludmilla Radchenko: Wings of Power

    Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery Al Khayat Art Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai

    Works resulting from a year of profound transformation initiated by the artist’s journey to Nepal, "where inner awareness and self-observation became central to her practice". Radchenko’s visual language combines painting, collage, symbolism, and layered cultural references, creating compositions that are [ ... ]

    Free
  • All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group

    NYUAD Art Gallery Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Curated by Nada Shabout of NYUAD's al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, this exhibition investigates and celebrates the work and influence of one of the most important art movement of the mid-Century Middle East. Dr Shabout brings [ ... ]

    Free
  • Émilie Dubois: Home Is Not a Place

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    Inspired by the experience of living and working alongside people from across the globe in the UAE, this exhibition by the UAE-based Guatemalan artist on a theme that will resonate with many expats – where actually is 'home'?  It features [ ... ]

    Free
  • Reflections: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Villain Collection

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    Modern and contemporary works from Syria, Lebanon, North Africa, and the UAE selected from the impressive private collection of Fairouz and Jean-Paul Villain – a pair of collectors for whom the acquisition of works has been a way of engaging [ ... ]

    Free
  • Khozema Al-Aaed: We Walk on Stories

    Firetti Contemporary Unit 29, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    Khozema Al‑Aaed's solo exhibition reimagines cartographies, reminding us that land absorbs our movements, our wounds, our hopes, "becoming a living archive of human presence" as the gallery puts it. "The compositions resemble traces of cities once inhabited, imagined, or departed. [ ... ]

    Free
  • Luis Olaso: Photosynthesis

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

    New work by the Spanish artist, which the gallery says marks a pivotal moment in his practice. They were created in his new studio in Cádiz, surrounded by olive, almond, and orange trees, allowing nature to enter physically and psychologically; [ ... ]

    Free
  • Nazilya Nagimova: Follow the Snail

    NIKA Project Space Unit 11 Al Khayat Avenue, 19th Street Road — Al Quoz 1, Dubai

    The first solo exhibition in the Emirates for the Münster-based Tatar artist Nazilya Nagimova brings together new works created specifically for her solo project at NIKA Project Space, plus selections from earlier projects. Nagimova explores memory, migration, and the search [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE RUSTING ECHOES

    NYUAD Arts Centre Project Space

    Works by Yoshi (Aisha Al Ali), Ammar Al Banna, Ahmed Al Kuwaiti and Shaikha Al Shamsi. The theme is time as both a material and emotional presence, expressed through processes of transformation, memory, repetition, and decay – so time not [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Bady Dalloul: Self-portrait with a Cat I Don’t Have

    Jameel Arts Centre Al Jaddaf, Dubai

    An extended solo exhibition for the Syrian-French artist, curated by Art Jameel’s Lucas Morin. Self-portrait with a cat I don’t have is Bady Dalloul’s first institutional solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates. Blending autobiographical anecdotes with stories of individuals [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE And After

    Cultural Foundation Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum Street, Abu Dhabi

    A group exhibition with 15 Arab artists that explores the element of air and its various states through the lens of Arabic terminology, specifically Sukoon, Hawaa, Naseem and Riyah. The exhibition, curated by Dirwaza Curatorial Lab, invites audiences to reconnect [ ... ]

    Free