421's writing seminar, led by Sarah Afaneh and designed for writers at any stage of their practice, explores the relationship between looking and writing, considering how an encounter with an artwork can translate into emotion, memory, and poetic response. With [... more]
The UAE National Orchestra continues its active schedule with a good-looking programme of contrasting music from three great Romantic composers – lively melodies from Rossini in the overture to The Barber of Seville, technical virtuosity and expressive range in Mendelssohn's [... more]
Dubai's long-established bastion of Francophone theatre, Culture Emulsion, looks like it has picked another winner with this French comedy – the play by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri was a great success in 1994, and it was made into an [... more]
Led by André Reyes, founder of the band that took rumba flamenca to audiences worldwide and sold more than 60 million albums, this incarnation of the Gipsy Kings is back in a new format: their first Symphonic project on a [... more]
Mad Cat Comedy's regular Thursday stop in Silicon Oasis promises "insane laughs every week". The door price of AED 99 includes one drink and popcorn.
SCHLiNGEL is an international film festival for children that has been running since 1996 in Chemnitz, Germany, showcasing the most exciting new productions for young people. The film for 23 Oct is a reprise: A Butterfly's Heart dir Inesa Kurklietytė [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
Second performance of this Francophone comedy by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri . Every Friday the Mesnards gather at the family café before going to dinner; but for this night the unspoken tensions and buried frustrations are revealed ... SOLD [... more]
"An evening of music, rhythm and discovery" – a live performance featuring the harp-like djembe and the kora drum, traditional instruments of West Africa. We haven't been told who will be playing, but the price does include a preliminary aperitif [... more]
Created by choreographer Alaa Krimed for his Sima Dance Company – the UAE's only (semi)permanent dance company? – this original production merges contemporary dance with tech and especially AI: "As the boundaries between humans and Artificial Intelligence continue to shift, [... more]
Mad Cat Comedy’s regular standup night at Xandros in Signature 1 Hotel, TECOM. The cover charge of AED 80 includes one drink.
From the awkward moments of everyday life to the unexpected twists that everyone can relate to, John Ague delivers an energetic performance packed with great storytelling and clever punchlines.
SCHLiNGEL is an international film festival for children that has been running since 1996 in Germany, showcasing the most exciting new productions for young people. This is the main event of SCHLiNGEL Abu Dhabi, a day of screenings each of [... more]
A group show for Lulua Alyahya, Rami Farook, Sohrab Hura, and Khaled Jarada that promises to take the viewer into “intimate, elusive worlds … Modest in scale, invite a form of looking that is closer and more inward, creating encounters [... more]
Inspired by Baz Luhrmann’s film, the musical brings 1900s Montmartre to the stage, blending a tragic love story with a modern pop soundtrack and all the theatrical energy you could hope for ... The Culture Emulsion team promise "the glamour, [... more]
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.
Comedy from two very sharp standups who work really well together. From first dates to ghosting, situationships to heartbreak stories, Noha Bashir and Denise Alexe address the struggles of dating life via sharp humour, relatable stories, and a brilliant chemistry [... more]
A group exhibition organised with Feminin Pluriel, featuring the work of a selection of contemporary female artists. Participating artists were given carte blanche to explore their own creative perspectives; the result is seen in photography, painting, sculpture, 3D and mixed [... more]
Maktaba is 421’s monthly gathering dedicated to collective reading, viewing, and discussion across disciplines. This session moves from thinking about performance to thinking through it – using the body, space, gesture, and relationality as sites for inquiry. Through a combination [... more]
The UAE National Orchestra continues its active schedule with the second performance of a good-looking programme of contrasting music from three great Romantic composers – lively melodies from Rossini in the overture to The Barber of Seville, technical virtuosity and [... more]
Discuss the top seven poems (from a list of 50) that have received the most votes by members. As with any such list, it's highly debatable – way too many US poets, way too few from MENASA (including the UAE, [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
The Mad Cat team does the rather cool Moon Bar at the Sana Restaurant in Mina Al Salam – a great venue: quite intimate, few distractions. Featuring surprise drop-ins, fresh material, and “the kind of intimate room where sitting in the [... more]
Second performance of Culture Emulsion's Francophone take on the Baz Luhrmann film, bringing 1900s Montmartre to the stage for a tragic love story with a modern pop soundtrack.
Surrounded by toys and objects from her childhood, Mallika Taneja uses a harmonium and a microphone to look for what she has lost – a singer and her songs. As she moves between this tale of searching, singing and grief, [... more]
A group show curated by Eugenia Kikodze, this exhibition brings together a multigenerational group of artists from across the Arab world and Eastern Europe, bound by a shared interest in metaphysics and its representation within art. The artists include Zaha [... more]
Dom Art Projects' third non-selling exhibition explores the formal and perceptual aspects of light through a variety of approaches from the 22 participants, "from rationalist modernism and expressionism to ironic conceptualism" as Dom Arts puts it. The artists are Akram [... more]
Makarov's solo exhibition responds to the mediated nature of contemporary reality by reconstructing armed conflict environments from fragments of media imagery circulating in a post-analogue world. Working across figurative painting and digital media, Makarov explores the relationship between virtual and physical [... more]
421's season of talks and panel discussions developed in collaboration with afikra, Localized Futures, explores the future of key cultural and civic sectors through a regional lens – challenging the dominant global narrative by looking at the complexities, innovations, and [... more]
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 …
This special gig brings Concert Series alumni and fan favourites back to the stage for one-off collaborations and extended jams. The artists will be announced ahead of the night, and "you never know who might walk on next". Food for [... more]
Christie’s first live auction of fine art in Abu Dhabi takes place on 1 November, preceded by two viewing days open to all. There will be more than 70 works from six decades of museum-quality art that traces the evolution [... more]
Celebrating the UAE Year of the Family 2026, the UAE National Orchestra brings audiences of all ages together for a joyful and interactive concert. Rhythm games, listening challenges and conversations with the narrator invite families and first-time concertgoers to become [... more]
For more than five decades, the Syrian artist, poet, and critic Talal Moualla has approached the image not simply as representation, but (says the gallery) “as a form of thought ... Moving between painting, criticism, poetry and research, his practice [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
Mad Cat Comedy's regular Thursday stop in Silicon Oasis promises "insane laughs every week". The door price of AED 99 includes one drink and popcorn.
Sharif’s first solo exhibition in the UAE presents an autobiographical and very personal series of works about the struggles of private and artist life in a closed society – "a vulnerable, nuanced presentation of life”. The Bahraini artist uses colour [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
The energy of 1970s Moroccan music meets hip hop in this piece by choreographer Fouad Boussouf, performed by the company of Le Phare - Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Normandie (where he's been the director since 2022). Näss (People) orchestrates [... more]
Mad Cat Comedy’s regular standup night at Xandros in Signature 1 Hotel, TECOM. The cover charge of AED 80 includes one drink.
This group show is the culmination of the second edition of NIKA Project Space's Open Studio programme: four artists based in the UAE were invited to develop new bodies of work in dialogue with the space, one another, and the [... more]
Stephan Kaluza’s practice is fundamentally concerned with depictions of nature, either as hyper-realistic oils or near-abstract renderings. These two modes of painting should be seen as different stages of the same subject in a process of transformation: disruptions creep in, and [... more]
A solo show for the Palestinian-Syrian-Dutch artist that reinterprets celebrated masterpieces from Western art. Diab revisits iconic works by artists including Picasso, van Gogh, Michelangelo and van Dyck, applying his own distinctive visual language to allow the images to speak [... more]
A survey of works by the French artist, "one of the most restless practitioners of his generation" as the gallery has it. Since the early 1960s Venet unusually broad range of media has included tar poured on to canvas and [... more]
Bringing together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera produced after 2018, this exhibition offers an immersive encounter with Salah Elmur’s world, "one where memory, landscape and identity merge and ripple through time" as the Jameel puts it. Through paintings that [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
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.
A 6m bench along the front edge of the stage compresses the space into a narrow, linear runway. Five dancers trace this boundary through a sequence of calculated tableaus, their bodies caught between rest and anticipation. The bench acts as [... more]
An hour of new material from the always excellent Valentina, this time on the people we love, the things they do that drive us crazy, and all those moments that make relationships so complicated.
A monumental one-room installation that restages the Bangladeshi artist's The River Remembers. Originally commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation and created in 2023, this large-scale textile work has handcrafted threads mapping the colour of the water of the Teesta and [... more]
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