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 [... 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]
Bassam Freiha Art Foundation's monthly lecture series, led by Dr Michaela Watrelot, BFAF Curator and Director of Exhibitions, returns with a second series – this one on individual artists rather than art movements. Nine monthly lectures, running to next June, will [... more]
The launch event for the sixth cycle of ELF's First Chapter, the only global-standard professional development scheme in the region for writers. Meet this year’s mentors, discover what’s in store for the new cohort, and celebrate the release of The [... 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 forum, now in its fourth annual edition, promises two days of conversations, practical workshops and opportunities to connect organised by Dubai Culture: “from building a brand and finding funding to exploring AI and telling your story, the programme offers [... more]
Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual celebration of indie/experimental cinema returns for its ninth edition with a 10-day lineup of films (26 of them) plus talks and artist development programmes. Screenings and events will take place at Mirage City Cinema, SAF’s open-air [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
"Comedy is just tragedy plus time. It's been 3,000 years. We're legally allowed to be hilarious." This original comedy – written and co-directed by top Dubai photo/videographer Ovidiu Dugulan – surveys the final stretch of a ten-year siege of Troy, [... more]
The UAE premiere of Näss (People) by Moroccan choreographer Fouad Boussouf and his company Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie is an encounter between the raw energy of 1970s Moroccan music and the physical intensity of contemporary hip-hop. Inspired [... more]
Mad Cat Comedy’s regular standup night at Xandros in Signature 1 Hotel, TECOM. The cover charge of AED 80 includes one drink.
Improv "where anything can happen and the audience becomes part of the show". Which is sort of how improv is defined, though in this case the title suggests there may be an extra element of gun-fingers ... The 3albaraka guys [... more]
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]
Full-length Wallace & Gromit action that won Aardman an Oscar for animation. Our plasticine heroes' latest business venture is a humane pest-control outfit called Anti-Pesto, but a mysterious superbunny-shaped beast is decimating the town’s vegetable plots and threatens Lady Tottington’s [... more]
The Pepp's regular early-evening showcase of Dubai’s local comedy talent, always with four standups on stage.
Second performance (of three) for this original comedy. Written and co-directed by top Dubai photo/videographer Ovidiu Dugulan, it surveys the final stretch of a ten-year siege of Troy, a job that should've taken three days ...
Bait Al Oud Abu Dhabi presents the third edition of its Strings Orchestra Concert, an evening that features outstanding students and graduates, professional musicians, and guest artists: "experience melodies and voices coming together as the energy of young talent meets [... 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.
Competitive improv – four teams teams representing the Hogwarts wizarding houses face off in a fast-paced tournament of wit, wild imagination, and wizardry. As ever, the audience decides who will win the coveted House Cup of Improv Glory. And if [... more]
The Callback Comedy crew with "Dubai's only variety comedy show ... coming back from the grave for one frightfully funny night ... Hosted by sinister Sunny and the nightmarish Noha 911, featuring wickedly good improv from the Off Script crew [... more]
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.
One of the Candlelight favourites. Vivaldi wrote the original as concerti for violin and orchestra, but it's often arranged for a quartet – as here, performed by the Gulf String Quartet. The ambiance is (non-flammable) candlelight, of course. The performance [... more]
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]
Bringing together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera produced after 2018, this exhibition promises an immersive encounter with Salah Elmur’s world – "where memory, landscape and identity merge and ripple through time", exploring the artist’s shifting sense of belonging and [... more]
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]
The final performance for this original comedy. Written and co-directed by top Dubai photo/videographer Ovidiu Dugulan, it surveys the final stretch of a ten-year siege of Troy, a job that should've taken three days ...
Dubai Design Week goes from strength to strength as the region's design festival and establishing Dubai's position as the design capital of the Middle East. This time there's a very busy, very programme around d3 includes installations, new commissions, exhibitions, [... more]
Sehiri’s intimate drama follows four generations of Ivorian immigrant women as they find solidarity, conflict and sometimes a sense of displacement in one another’s company. We're dropped into the lives of Marie (Aïssa Maïga), Naney (Debora Lobe Naney) and Jolie [... 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 …
The Emirati artist's first solo exhibition features an imaginary bestiary on paintings, works on paper and ceramic sculptures. Al Falahi’s creatures each carry a feeling, a memory or a premonition, says the gallery: "Pieced together from what has stayed with the [... more]
A visual meditation on the horizon as both boundary and promise, a visible line that remains perpetually distant. Alaa Itani's solo show brings together reverse glass paintings of horizons, blurred landscapes, and moving cloud formations; he explores landscape as acts [... more]
Collaborative works from Tirdad Hashemi and Soufia Erfanian’s ongoing Flower series, unfolding across gallery walls covered with hand-drawn graffiti; rooted in the artists’ shared and individual experiences, the works consider what it means to care for, sustain and grow alongside [... more]
Founded by Emirati filmmaker and curator Nawaf Al Janahi in 2020, Cineolio‘s mission is focused on promoting short films and expanding their audience reach internationally. Its Cinenights screening series presents a diverse selection of short films on the big screen, [... more]
Amir Khojasteh's third solo exhibition with the gallery presents the first body of work he has developed after leaving his home country, Iran.
Following showings in Paris, Lyon, Seoul and Shanghai, this exhibition – "a strategic research project for L'ÉCOLE, at the crossroads of archaeology and the history of techniques, and goldsmithing craftsmanship" – demonstrates the skills and techniques in reproducing a Celtic [... more]
A spectacular demonstration of musicianship: two grand pianos, eight hands playing simultaneously, a programme of exciting rhythms and orchestral delights reworked for the keyboard. The programme: Charles Gounodx: Waltz from Faust Mozart: Overture to Le nozze di Figaro, K.492 Saint-Saëns: [... 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.
“Dubai’s hottest comedy night” (aka the Mad Cat team) come to the moodily-lit speakeasy style bar in DIFC for a regular Thursday gig. The door price includes one drink.
"In this exhibition, memory becomes material: what stays, what fades, and what changes with time ... Through play and experimentation, Reem returns to lived experiences, reimagining them through the distance of memory and blurring the line between what is real [... more]
A pop-up exhibition by the New York-based Turkish artist in the hotel's lobby exploring migration, memory, identity and the meaning of belonging – "for me, home is not necessarily a place we return to, but something we carry, recreate, and [... more]
Bringing together personal histories and material experimentation, this exhibition – the first in the UAE by the Brazilian artist – reflects on growth, rupture and renewal, revealing how fragments of the past can take root in unexpected ways. With new [... more]
What a good idea this is: the Abu Dhabi Festival is running the first outdoor children’s art biennale in the Middle East Under the theme How the World Feels, the Biennale will explore how children experience the world through touch, [... more]
This slightly trippy animation features two intrepid sisters, four-year-old Juliette and eight-year-old Carmen, who discover a passage into the extraordinary world of their favourite book, Kingdom of the Air Streams. Transformed into cats and separated from each other, the girls [... more]
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