"This is not a talk, and it is not spectacle for spectacle’s sake. It is an intervention (or perhaps, a contemplation) inviting audiences to negotiate artists and their practices more critically and dynamically, to engage with them, and to enter [ ... ]
Lebanese-born NYC-based comic, a regular at Gotham Comedy Club and Union Hall shows in Brooklyn when she's not touring – which she does a lot. This is a new show, touring around Europe and North America as well as this [ ... ]
The second weekend for the spectacular (and spectacularly successful) Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Look for decent songs, great choreography and staging, and a well-paced plot (not always the case with musicals ...) Friday/Saturday prices start at AED 160, Sunday it's [ ... ]
The Emirati singer and his band brings his signature blend of old-school soul and contemporary neo-soul to the TODA stage.
With more than four decades of music-making behind him, Lulu Santos has a catalogue of iconic Brazilian hits that continues to resonate with audiences through sincerity, melody, and timeless songwriting – songs such as Tempos Modernos, Toda Forma de Amor, and [ ... ]
Durags are stretchable fabrics worn over the head to shape and protect the hair; in Akinbola’s practice, they are both culturally loaded objects and a material he can reconfigure. For this solo show, Akinbola assembles durags into compositions that are [ ... ]
Mad Cat’s standup team at their regular stop at the Easy Tiger bar in Abu Dhabi's Al Ain Palace. The door price of AED 99 includes two drinks ...
The Courtyard's popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [ ... ]
The Comedy Kix folk take over the Radisson Blu Deira Creek's Marbles Karaoke Bar. On the bill: Amr Elassal, Emaad Siddiqui, Moncef Boumaza, Faizan Bhat, Saeed Alnahdy and Anton Galvez. It's free, but with a minimum spend of AED 75 [ ... ]
A regular Mad Cat Comedy night – "Dubai's wildest comedy show on Saturday" at "the first purpose built comedy room in the country". The cover charge of AED 99 includes two F&B coupons.
How do borders and ideologies attempt to contain open stretches of land and water, and segregate those who inhabit them? What ties us to a place, and what severs us from it? Which ways of living and knowledge can move [ ... ]
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 [ ... ]
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 [ ... ]
Modern and contemporary works from Syria, Lebanon, North Africa, and the UAE selected from the private collection of Fairouz and Jean-Paul Villain – a pair of collectors for whom the acquisition of works has been a way of engaging with [ ... ]
Sara Naim’s fourth solo show at the gallery is also her first public exhibition of paintings, large-scale works produced between 2023 and 2026 that move between figuration and abstraction. The exhibition is accompanied by a new video performance, Mother Practices [ ... ]
Khalaf explores the relationship between self, object, and other through a focus on 'steel' in public spaces: The Field of Dreams, or "dreams as minefields", remind us of the modern structures of unbridled capitalism and the transformative domination of life. [ ... ]
"All the lands from sunrise to sunset", a phrase attributed to the Mesopotamian king Sargon of Akkad, graphically invoked his claim to total dominion. Taking this assertion as both point of departure and provocation, this exhibition includes works by Alla [ ... ]
A two-act evening of spontaneous scenes and songs based on audience suggestions, by some of our most experienced players and guests. After warming up with some fun games and scenes, the improvisers bring the 1950’s Film Noir genre to life [ ... ]
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania has created a docudrama that reconstructs the horrifying true story of five-year-old Hind Rajab as she is bombarded by the Israeli army in Gaza in 2024. Rajab survived the original assault by the IDF, which [ ... ]
The Courtyard's popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [ ... ]
Combining language, heritage, and expression, the world of Arabic calligraphy offers centuries of tradition for artists to draw upon. Curated by DiarBid ArtHouse and presented by Dubai Culture and Alliance Française Dubai, this exhibition features established artists, calligraphers, and instructors [ ... ]
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 [ ... ]
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 [ ... ]
New Orleans jazz – ragtime, blues, brass – in an intimate, street-style bar setting. Shows last about an hour, and there are performances at 6.30pm and 9pm. Note that there's a AED 150 minimum spend on food and/or beverages in [ ... ]
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 [ ... ]
A two-act evening of spontaneous scenes and songs based on audience suggestions, by some of our most experienced players and guests. After warming up with some fun games and scenes, the improvisers bring the 1950’s Film Noir genre to life [ ... ]
Xu Zhong, one of China’s most distinguished conductors and pianists, takes the baton with the UAE National Orchestra for a concert of shared artistry and cultural exchange. The programme: Liu Tieshan and Mao Yuan Dance of The Yao People Brahms Concerto for [ ... ]
The Courtyard's popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [ ... ]
Maya Plisetskaya (1925 – 2015) was a Bolshoi star as dancer and choreographer. As a dancer, she developed "an individual, iconoclastic style that capitalised on her electrifying stage presence" as ballet historian Tim Scholl put it. "Her very personal style [ ... ]
A solo exhibition by Noritoshi Mitsuuchi, whose paintings "unfold as living worlds where forms gently emerge from within one another, expanding, dissolving, and reappearing in a continuous state of becoming". Drawing on motifs that evoke plant life, his imagery suggests [ ... ]
A music-filled dialogue-free feature-length animation about a young astronaut and her guardian robot. Based on Kid Koala’s award-winning graphic novel, it deals poignantly with love, loss, memories and the bonds that connect us ... The film has an original score [ ... ]
A two-act evening of spontaneous scenes and songs based on audience suggestions, by some of our most experienced players and guests. After warming up with some fun games and scenes, the improvisers bring the 1950’s Film Noir genre to life [ ... ]
The Courtyard's popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [ ... ]
A writers’ group intended for writers to practice their craft without the pressures of producing a final outcome, designed to provide a supportive environment for writers to write alone yet in a group. You're invited to polish your writing skills [ ... ]
For her first solo exhibition in the UAE, curated by Nadine Khoury, Samar Hejazi presents a body of work that explores how forms shift, unravel, and reassemble over time. Working across textile, printmaking, and spatial intervention, her practice suggests that [ ... ]
Born in Egypt and long based in Syria, Ibrahim's practice is deeply informed by the visual traditions of the Levant and the rural soul of the Nile. This exhibition, curated by Randa Sadaka, offers a vibrant tapestry of lived experience [ ... ]
A solo exhibition curated by Randa Sadaka, promising “a rare and intimate journey into a visual language shaped by the intersections of Egyptian and Syrian modernities”. Born in Egypt and long based in Syria, Ibrahim’s practice is informed by the [ ... ]
The UAE National Orchestra tackles the vivid storytelling and shimmering orchestration of the orchestral work inspired by the stories of One Thousand and One Nights. Expect exotic instrumental combinations and dazzling solos that showcase every section of the orchestra, with [ ... ]
A two-act evening of spontaneous scenes and songs based on audience suggestions, by some of our most experienced players and guests. After warming up with some fun games and scenes, the improvisers bring the 1950’s Film Noir genre to life [ ... ]
The Courtyard's popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [ ... ]
This first solo exhibition by the Emirati artist explores memory, loss, and the passing of time, inviting reflection on how personal and inherited experiences leave their mark on who we are. She uses photography as her primary means of documentation, [ ... ]
Jumana Emil Abboud’s first solo exhibition in the Emirates draws on the lineage of Palestinian folktales and their continued resonance in the present – how stories inhabit landscapes, shape personal histories and collective memory, and create an enchanted relationship to [ ... ]
Elusive Territories is group show for 15 prominent Palestinian artists whose work examines the relationship between exile, memory, and homeland – three dynamics that constantly engage with one another, especially at this critical time. Says the gallery: "Throughout the exhibition, [ ... ]
Safwan Dahoul’s most recent body of work continues his Dream series – an ongoing body of work investigating the dream state that he began back in the late 1980s, exploring "the physical and psychological effects of alienation, solitude, and longing [ ... ]
A great idea from Foundry Downtown – a group exhibition featuring artists based in the UAE who are not (currently) represented by galleries. The organisers describe it as “for the first time, a selling exhibition structured around accessibility, discovery, and [ ... ]
A group show for three artists whose work here explores the dialogue that emerges between generations of artists, revealing how personal histories, cultural memory, and individual artistic languages intersect. Through painting and illustration, the artists reflect on themes of identity, [ ... ]
In this exhibition of a new body of work, curated by Cima Azzam, Noor Al Suwaidi approaches colour as a field of sensation where form appears and dissolves within shifting tonalities – "figures hover at the edge of abstraction; colour [ ... ]
Rooted in her surroundings, the work of Salmah Al Mansoori, an Emirati artist from Abu Dhabi, begins with acts of noticing: fragments, residues, and overlooked materials drawn from everyday life. These are reworked into new forms that carry both personal [ ... ]
As part of its ongoing institutional programming, Sharjah Architecture Triennial presents what it terms a “new chapter” in a long-term research initiative dedicated to architectural archives in the Arab world. Building on the inaugural 2023 exhibition, which focused on Beirut, [ ... ]
Described by the gallery as "a significant new exhibition" and "a return to the essential experience of art as presence, encounter, and shared space", this show features a curated selection of 50 newly arrived 2D and 3D works by Annalù, [ ... ]
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