magpie

LAST CHANCE SILA: All that is Left to You
2026-01-05 | Maraya Art Centre, Al Qasba, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
In times of adversity, especially amid the ongoing devastation in Gaza, tatreez – the ancient practice of hand-embroidery, a foundational element of Palestinian intangible heritage – becomes an act of survival and defiance. This exhibition of works by 25 artists honours the centuries-old practice and reimagined it through a contemporary lens. Several of the featured works are the result of direct collaboration with master embroiderers from the Inaash Association, ensuring the preservation of the authenticity and the evolving spirit of tatreez.
The participating artists:
Amer Shomali
Abdel Rahman Katanani
Areen Hassan
Aya Haidar
Bokja
Cristiana de Marchi
Dahouk Chamsi-Pasha
Farah Behbehani
Hazem Harb
Katya Traboulsi
Joanna Barakat
Leila Jabre Jureidini
Liane Al Ghusain
Maysaloun Faraj
Nada Debs
Naima Almajdobah
naqsh collective
Nour Hage
Omarvis
Sama Alshaibi
Samar Hejazi
Samia Halaby
Tala Hammoud Atrouni
Steve Sabella
Zaid Farouki

LAST CHANCE Aliyah Alawadhi: Girl Parts
2026-01-04 | 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 are not nostalgic visions of innocence but reimaginings of ‘girl’: an ancient inheritance of edicts around beauty, shame, and desire, rewritten here with magic, rage, and much speculation”.
This Hunna Art exhibition is curated by Océane Sailly.

LAST CHANCE Mohammad Alfaraj: Seas are sweet, fish tears are salty
2026-01-04 | Jameel Arts Centre, Al Jaddaf, Dubai
The first institutional solo exhibition of Mohammad Alfaraj brings together installations, photography, video works and site-specific commissions that respond to the gardens and outdoor spaces of the Jameel. Central to Alfaraj’s practice is his use of storytelling, both in written and oral forms; Alfaraj, who lives and works in the Saudi oasis city of Al-Ahsa, draws much of his source material from the area’s distinctive agricultural landscapes, oral traditions and everyday life, which he expands into universal stories and parables.

LAST CHANCE Manar Abu Dhabi 2025
2026-01-04 | [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 Key locations include Jubail Island, Souq Al Mina, and, for the first time, Al Ain’s Al Qattara and Al Jimi Oases. Guided tours will be available at both Jubail Island and Al Ain location; Jubail Island, Al Qattara Oasis and Al Jimi Oasis will all have F&B pop-ups and “experiences”. The website will have a map indicating locations.
Co-curated by Alia Zaal Lootah, Munira Al Sayegh and Mariam Alshehhi, the project forms part of Public Art Abu Dhabi, a DCT Abu Dhabi initiative that champions art in public spaces and sustained engagement with the city’s environment.

LAST CHANCE Fertile Dreams
2026-01-02 | 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, and installation, they turn to rhythmic repetition as a shared method of accessing unconscious and symbolic worlds; rooted in Surrealist philosophy yet resonant with the mystic patterns of Middle Eastern spiritual traditions, their works open passages between body and land, spirit and matter, dream and physicality.

LAST CHANCE Fereydoun Ave, Raana Farnoud, Shaqayeq Arabi: IMPROVISATIONS
2025-12-31 | 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, a form that repeats with variation, or a gesture made in passing but left to settle”, as the gallery has it.
In Farnoud’s paintings, forms hover between presence and disappearance. Ave’s works honour simplicity, allowing small elements to settle into poetry. Arabi assembles delicate sculptures, where fragility becomes a kind of resilience.
“In a time that often demands spectacle, these works ask us to slow down, pay attention, and find presence in the modest, fragile, and unresolved …”

The Comedy Lab @ Easy Tiger
2025-12-30 20:00 - 23:30, 2025-12-23 20:00 - 23:30 (Asia/Dubai) | Al Ain Palace Hotel, Corniche Road, Abu Dhabi
MadCat’s standup team at its regular stop in the Easy Tiger bar in Abu Dhabi’s Al Ain Palace. The door price of AED 99 includes two drinks …

Beauty and the Beast: dir Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise (1991)
2025-12-28 15:00 - 16:30 | Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
A tale as old as time gets the Disney treatment, with added lustre from a newly restored print of this family-friendly animation: the beast (an enchanted prince, of course) tries to win the love of the young and beautiful Belle with the help of the caste’s enchanted staff (who have been transformed into a fetching collection of utensils and tableware). Great script, good songs, and another fine free pick from the Cinema Space programmers.

LAST CHANCE Art Here 2025
2025-12-28 | Louvre Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi
The fifth edition of the Louvre Abu Dhabi Art Here exhibition, featuring six artworks by seven artists shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize, has been curated by guest curator Sophie Mayuko Arni under the theme Shadows – “exploring the interplay between light and absence, visibility and concealment, and the layered dimensions of memory, identity, and transformation”.
This year’s edition invited proposals from artists based in the GCC and Japan, along with artists from the MENA region with a GCC connection. There were more than 400 submissions, from which six were shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize; the winner will be announced in December.
The exhibits:
I remember a light: sculpture by Palestinian architect, artist, and researcher Ahmed Alaqra that reimagines shadows as urban traces, referencing the traditional mashrabiya lattice screen. Made of stacked acrylic cubes containing 3D-printed shapes from shadow photographs of Sharjah, the sculpture transforms fleeting encounters of light and architecture into enduring sculptural artifacts.
Echo: an interactive light installation by Emirati artist and musician Jumairy. Visitors encounter a still water pond, a single flower, and ambient sound; reimagining the myth of Echo and Narcissus, the work uses light and shadow to transform absence into intimacy and invite a deeper encounter with memory and the unconscious.
skadw: an immersive audiovisual installation of light, fog, and sound by Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa. Shadows are transformed into sculptural form; a single beam cuts through shifting mist, creating ever-changing patterns of shadow and resonance. Inspired by the Japanese concept of Ma, the beauty of negative space, the work invites viewers into a meditative environment where absence becomes presence.
Tree Studies: the Kuwaiti-Pakistani artist Hamra Abbas has an installation of 31 stone inlay sculptures inspired by trees found in Pakistan and in the UAE, including olive, pomegranate, and cherry. Using her distinctive lapis-on-lapis technique to create shadow-like foliage, the works balance realism and abstraction.
A Sundial for the Night Without End: a sculptural sundial conceived for a world after the sun by Japanese artist Rintaro Fuse. Formed from polished stainless steel, the work reflects its surroundings while aligning three gnomons to past, present, and future North Stars. Installed beneath the museum’s dome, it transforms cosmic time into a meditation on memory, absence, and the persistence of eternity.
Dancing shadows: a pavilion of swaying stainless-steel mesh, inspired by traditional Kawachi weaving. Supported by slender columns, the structure creates shifting patterns of shadow and light. Using recycled industrial material, the architect duo YOKOMAE et BOUAYAD (Takuma Yokomae from Japan and Ghali Bouayad from Morocco) have created an installation that blends Tokyo and Marrakesh design traditions, offering a poetic space where architecture moves like nature.

LAST CHANCE The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line
2025-12-28 | The Third Line, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Shumon Basar curates this project marking the gallery’s 20th anniversary, a look back on “two decades of The Third Line’s story in relation to global cultural, political, and economic shifts”. The exhibition component features both early and more recent works from every artist currently represented by The Third Line; it’s arranged in four chronological sections – 2005-2009, 2010-2015, 2016-2020, 2021-2025 – each contextualised with key political, economic, and cultural moments.
Artists represented include Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Anuar Khalifi, Bady Dalloul, Farah Al Qasimi, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Jordan Nassar, Kamran Samimi, Laleh Khorramian, Lamya Gargash, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nima Nabavi, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Sahand Hesamiyan, Sara Naim, Sarah Awad, Shirin Aliabadi, Slavs and Tatars, Sophia Al-Maria, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Vian Sora, yasiin bey, and Youssef Nabil.

Joke Hub
2025-12-27 20:00 - 23:30, 2025-12-20 20:00 - 23:30 | Canopy by Hilton Dubai Al Seef, Al Seef Street, Umm Hurair 1, Dubai
A regular MadCat Comedy night – “Dubai’s wildest comedy show on Saturday” (sic). The cover charge of AED 99 includes two F&B coupons.

Politically Incorrect Comedy
2025-12-26 20:00 - 23:30, 2025-12-19 20:00 - 23:30 | Xandros, Singature 1 Hotel, Barsha Heights, Dubai
MadCat Comedy’s regular standup night at Xandros in Signature 1 Hotel, TECOM. The cover charge of AED 80 includes one drink.

The Comedy Lab
2025-12-25 20:00 - 22:30 | Radisson Red, Dubai Digital Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai
MadCat Comedy’s regular stop in Silicon Oasis promises “insane laughs every week”. Given the date, we’d expect something a bit special … The door price of AED 99 includes two drinks.

The Holdovers: dir Alexander Payne (2023)
2025-12-25 19:30 - 21:45 | Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
A warm-hearted and thoughtful holiday story of three lonely, shipwrecked people who find support in the most unlikely of places. A curmudgeonly teacher (Paul Giamatti) is forced to remain on campus at a New England prep school over Christmas to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go; as the days pass, the grumpy prof forms an unexpected bond with smart-but-troubled student Angus (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). The result is a surprisingly engaging and really rather sweet Christmas comedy-drama.

The Muppet Christmas Carol: dir Brian Henson (1992)
2025-12-25 18:00 - 19:30 | Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
The best film version of Dickens’ novel? Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine, obviously having a lot of fun) is visted on Christmas Eve by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Together with kind, humble Bob Cratchit (Kermit the Frog) and his family, the Spirits open Scrooge’s eyes and his heart to the true meaning of Christmas. A heartwarming and hilarious holiday classic, told as never before. Yule love it!

LAST CHANCE Nick Brandt: The Day May Break Chapter Four – The Echo of Our Voices
2025-12-23 | Waddington Custot, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The Day May Break (2021–) is an ongoing global series portraying people and animals whose lives have been profoundly affected by environmental degradation and destruction. This fourth chapter of the series was photographed in Jordan, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, and features portraits of refugee families who fled the war in Syria and now live in Jordan – an ongoing displacement largely driven by the effects of climate change. Many are forced to relocate multiple times each year, following seasonal agricultural work and scarce rainfall.
This chapter in the series is a testament to connection and resilience — an affirmation that even when all else is lost, we still have one another. Photographic historian Philip Prodger has described the series as “a landmark body of work by one of photography’s great environmental champions … Channelling his outrage into quiet determination, the result is a portrait of us all, at a critical moment in the Anthropocene”.

It's a Wonderful Life: dir Frank Capra (1946)
2025-12-22 19:30 - 21:45 | Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Capra’s classic snow-laden tearjerker (five Oscar nominations) has James Stewart as a struggling banker (!) who becomes so disillusioned with his small-town life that he contemplates suicide. Fortunately his trainee guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), is able to intervene and helps our hero rediscover the true value of friendship by showing how much impact he has made on his home community. Nearly 80 years later, Capra’s life-affirming fable continues to be a heartwarming experience for family viewing at Christmas.

Sunday Night Comedy
2025-12-21 19:00 - 22:30 | Social Distrikt, The Pointe, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai
The weekly sandup night at Social Distrikt from Dubomedy, top dogs on the Dubai comedy scene. We’re promised “an evening of Big Laughs, Live Music, a Killer Line-up and Great Vibes” … It’s free but there’s a minimum spend of one drink or food item per person.

The Nutcracker
2025-12-21 | Dubai Opera
The final performances (at 2pm and 8pm) of the seasonal favourite, delivered by the Astrakhan Theater Opera and Ballet in a suitably classical manner and of course featuring some of the best-loved music that Tchaikovsky ever wrote …

Bait Al Oud Annual Concert
2025-12-20 20:00 - 22:00 | Cultural Foundation, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum Street, Abu Dhabi
The Bait Al Oud Annual Concert brings together students, graduates, and instructors to celebrate the musical achievements of the year with the oud, qanun, cello and rebabah. It’s always good …

Once Upon a Time in Dubai
2025-12-20 19:30 - 22:00 | The Agenda, Abdullah Omran Taryam St, Media City, Dubai
A musical celebration of love, ambition, and the power of dreams, “a story of passion and perseverance set in the glamorous city of Dubai” with spectacular choreography, an original soundtrack, and dramatic sets. It’s at the Agenda for a lengthy stint …
20 Dec 7.30pm
22 Dec 7.30pm
23 Dec 7.30pm
24 Dec 2.30pm
25 Dec 7.30pm
26 Dec 2.30 and 7.30pm
27 Dec 2.30 and 7.30pm
29 Dec 7.30pm
30 Dec 7.30pm
31 Dec 2.00pm
1 Jan 7.30pm
2 Jan 2.30 and 7.30pm
3 Jan 2.30 and 7.30pm
1 Jan 7.30pm
5 Jan 7.30pm
7 Jan 7.30pm
8 Jan 7.30pm
9 Jan 2.30 and 7.30pm
10 Jan 2.30 and 7.30pm
11 Jan 7.30pm

LAST CHANCE Hussain Jamil: Refracted Life
2025-12-20 | Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery, Al Khayat Art Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai
In this exhibition, Jamil presents a new body of work that explores how we see ourselves — and how we are seen — in an ever-changing world. Working with hand-formed polished steel wall sculptures, woven metal mesh, and mirrored sculptural surfaces, he creates artworks that bend, fracture, and recompose the viewer’s reflection. Each piece is activated by presence and movement — so the spectator becomes a participant within the work.

The Nutcracker
2025-12-20 | Dubai Opera
Two further performances (at 2pm and 8pm) for the seasonal favourite, delivered by the Astrakhan Theater Opera and Ballet in a suitably classical manner and of course featuring some of the best-loved music that Tchaikovsky ever wrote …
The final performances are tomorrow (21 December).

Carols Reimagined
2025-12-19 20:00 - 21:30 | Zabeel Theatre, Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, Palm Jumeirah West Crescent, Dubai
“Not just a concert, it’s a soulful celebration of joy, light, and togetherness” says the blurb. We’re not sure how much reimagining has gone on to deliver “the spirit of Christmas like never before”, but the lineup is pretty good – Chinua Hawk (USA), Ananya (India), Dina Stars (Jordan), Esther Philander (South Africa), Jessica Alves (Portugal), Rachel Mbalie (Malawi), and Akosua Kyeremanten (Ghana), together with the Nabra Chamber Choir and a “world-class” band. As usual with Zabeel Theatre shows, ticket holders get a 20% discount on food and drink at the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray.

Tajouj: dir Gadalla Gubara (1977)
2025-12-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Efiɛ Gallery, 2 Al Khayat Art Avenue, First Al Khail Street, Dubai
The first feature film to be directed by a Sudanese filmmaker, this historical romance tells of the beautiful Tajouj whose cousin publicly declares his love for her in a song. The traditions of the tribe decry such an act and his proposal of marriage is initially refused – but he apologises, and the marriage is finally allowed. In the meantime, however, another suitor has appeared with tragic consequences …
Screens as part of a monthly film programme in Efie’s Rekord Gallery tracing the intertwined histories of African and Arab Liberation Cinema: “through a carefully curated selection of films, the series interrogates how revolutionary aesthetics, political struggle, and the diasporic imagination have shaped, and continue to shape, the language of cinema across continents”. It’s organised with Bootleg Griot, an independent public library project currently ensconced in the Rekord Gallery that is aimed at improving access to literature and print media – especially from writers and collectives of African descent.

The Nutcracker
2025-12-19 | Dubai Opera
Two further performances (at 2pm and 8pm) for the seasonal favourite, delivered by the Astrakhan Theater Opera and Ballet in a suitably classical manner and of course featuring some of the best-loved music that Tchaikovsky ever wrote …
There are further performances as follows:
20 December 2pm and 8pm21 December 2pm and 8pm

The Comedy Lab
2025-12-18 20:00 - 22:30 | Radisson Red, Dubai Digital Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai
MadCat Comedy’s regular stop in Silicon Oasis promises “insane laughs every week”. The door price of AED 99 includes two drinks.
