Sara Naim: From the Perspective of Language
2026-03-13 | The Third Line, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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 Her Tongue (2026), which “abstracts the Arabic language into gestures and sounds that no longer produce coherent meaning … Together, the paintings and video extend Naim’s ongoing investigation into how meaning is constructed through inherited systems such as language, symbols, and ideology”.
To 31 May.
Above: Sara Naim, Skin 8 (2025)

LAST CHANCE Anuar Khalifi: Remember the Future
2026-03-01
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. Says the gallery: “The works move between reality and imagination and across different tenses in time, inviting viewers to partake in meaning-making with curiosity and childlike wonder”.

Anuar Khalifi: Remember the Future
2026-01-17
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. Says the gallery: “The works move between reality and imagination and across different tenses in time, inviting viewers to partake in meaning-making with curiosity and childlike wonder”. To 1 March.
Above: Anuar Khalifi, Remember the Future, 2025

LAST CHANCE The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line
2025-12-28
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.

The Twentieth Line
2025-12-13 14:30 - 16:00 (Asia/Dubai)
The Third Line gallery is currently running The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line, a significant retrospective exhibition curated by Shumon Basar to mark its 20th anniversary by looking back on two decades of The Third Line’s story in relation to global cultural, political, and economic shifts. In this related conversation, hosted by Basar, prominent figures from The Third Line’s adjacent history and the Gulf’s cultural present discuss their take on the evolution in arts across multiple, accelerated transformations. Participants: Sarra Alayyan (deputy editor, Dazed MENA), Rami Farook (artist, curator, producer), Butheina Kazim (founder, Cinema Akil), Sara Bin Safwan (curator, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi).

The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line
2025-09-18
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.
The exhibition is complemented by a series of conversations with key individuals from the gallery’s history, and Flash Sales Specials – a series of 48-hour pop-up sales of long-unseen works from the gallery’s archive, announced via The Third Line’s social media platforms over the course of the exhibition.
To 28 December.

LAST CHANCE Nima Nabavi: Sunrise at the Vortex
2025-07-27
The second solo exhibition by Nima Nabavi at the gallery features new works that mark a significant evolution in the artist’s practice, reflecting a deepened commitment to introspection, geometry, and modes of making that embrace technology alongside traditional tools. Created in concentrated bursts within makeshift studios in Roswell, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Dubai, the resulting works “exude increasing complexity and intensity in both form and colour” as the gallery puts it.

Nima Nabavi: Sunrise at the Vortex
2025-06-15
The second solo exhibition by Nima Nabavi at the gallery features new works that mark a significant evolution in the artist’s practice, reflecting a deepened commitment to introspection, geometry, and modes of making that embrace technology alongside traditional tools. Created in concentrated bursts within makeshift studios in Roswell, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Dubai, the resulting works “exude increasing complexity and intensity in both form and colour” as the gallery puts it.
Born in Iran in 1978, Nima Nabavi is a self-taught artist now based between Dubai and New York. His practice centres on grid-based compositions of elaborately layered, ordered forms; this mathematical approach and repetitive numeric symbolism rely heavily on advanced planning, precise calculations, and self-developed methodologies to ensure the vital structural accuracy of each work – “this contemplative execution of intricate geometries aims to build complexity out of simple forms and reveal the emergent harmony and inherent beauty of our shared reality”.
To 27 July.
Above: Nima Nabavi, Roswell2223 (2023)

LAST CHANCE Huda Lutfi: Unraveling
2025-05-27
Huda Lutfi’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery includes works from three recent series – When Dreams Call for Silence (2019), Our Black Thread (2020–2021), and Healing Devices (2020–ongoing) It also includes a selection of previously unshown miniature collages, offering insight into Lutfi’s artistic experimentations that culminated in these sculptural abstractions, along with a new video work, The Seven-legged Demon of the Night (2025), made in memory of Lutfi’s mother, whose lifelong work as a seamstress inspired the artist’s practice centred on thread and fabric.

Huda Lutfi: Unraveling
2025-04-15
Huda Lutfi’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery includes works from three recent series – When Dreams Call for Silence (2019), Our Black Thread (2020–2021), and Healing Devices (2020–ongoing) It also includes a selection of previously unshown miniature collages, offering insight into Lutfi’s artistic experimentations that culminated in these sculptural abstractions, along with a new video work, The Seven-legged Demon of the Night (2025), made in memory of Lutfi’s mother, whose lifelong work as a seamstress inspired the artist’s practice centred on thread and fabric. To 27 May.
Above: Huda Lutfi, Missing Shoe (2018)

LAST CHANCE Slavs and Tatars: Simurgh Self-Help
2025-04-04
This is The Third Line’s third solo exhibition with the artist collective Slavs and Tatar, presenting a new body of work inspired by Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne – Département des Aigles (1968-1972) – one of the most influential works of conceptual art of the 20th century. In Simurgh Self-Help, Slavs and Tatars embark on an inventive ‘translation’ of the eagle through the lens of Simurgh, a mythical bird deeply rooted in Turkic and Persianate folklore, Sufi traditions, and the literature of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Slavs and Tatars: Simurgh Self-Help
2025-01-27
This is The Third Line’s third solo exhibition with the artist collective Slavs and Tatar, presenting a new body of work inspired by Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne – Département des Aigles (1968-1972) – one of the most influential works of conceptual art of the 20th century. In Simurgh Self-Help, Slavs and Tatars embark on an inventive ‘translation’ of the eagle through the lens of Simurgh, a mythical bird deeply rooted in Turkic and Persianate folklore, Sufi traditions, and the literature of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Gallery One is dedicated to exploring the mythology of Simurgh, a winged creature often depicted with the body of a peacock and the head of a dog. The exhibition offers a speculative history, presenting an alter-ego for contemporary societies dealing with dilemmas about national identity and nationalism. If the eagle serves as a repository for nationalism and empire, rooted in geopolitical concerns, the Simurgh evokes an empire of senses and a dominion of the otherworldly, bridging the affective and the extractive.
In Gallery Two, the exhibition pivots to explore melons as Central Asian repositories of value, knowledge, and world-building. Writing, central to Slavs and Tatars’ practice, appears in the texture of melon skins and within the pages of books. Here, the melons, depicted as glass lamps or mirrors, tell the story of the region via flora, rather than fauna.
To 4 April.
Above: Slavs and Tatars, This not that (2024)

LAST CHANCE Neither Here ~ Nor Elsewhere
2025-01-24
A group exhibition curated by Sanaz Askari that brings together a diverse collective of artists from across Africa and Asia – Faissal El-Malak, Hayv Kahraman, Mahsa Merci, Michael Ho, Omar Mismar, Sam Samiee, Sophia Al-Maria, Soufiane Ababri, Tahmineh Monzavi, and Yumna Al-Arashi, “all of whom convey narratives of identity, desire, displacement, and resistance in response to prevailing cultural and political conditions shaped by migration, censorship, and societal marginalisation … The exhibition centres on the tension between fear and fantasy, the public and the private, as experienced by marginalised bodies existing within distinct socio-political frameworks”.

Neither Here ~ Nor Elsewhere
2024-12-14
A group exhibition curated by Sanaz Askari that brings together a diverse collective of artists from across Africa and Asia – Faissal El-Malak, Hayv Kahraman, Mahsa Merci, Michael Ho, Omar Mismar, Sam Samiee, Sophia Al-Maria, Soufiane Ababri, Tahmineh Monzavi, and Yumna Al-Arashi, “all of whom convey narratives of identity, desire, displacement, and resistance in response to prevailing cultural and political conditions shaped by migration, censorship, and societal marginalisation … The exhibition centres on the tension between fear and fantasy, the public and the private, as experienced by marginalised bodies existing within distinct socio-political frameworks”.
To 24 January.
Above: Hayv Kahraman, Tentacular eye boobs (2023)

LAST CHANCE Vian Sora: House of Pearls
2024-12-05
New paintings and works on paper from the Louisville-based artist that explore pearls as “a metaphor for achieving stability and the needed structural integrity for life itself to regenerate”. Drawing on her experiences as a war survivor and immigrant (Iraqi-born, she sought refuge in Dubai following the US invasion of Iraq) Sora reflects on the uncertainty and shifting boundaries of existence, capturing the physical, mental, and emotional toll experienced across nations, cultures, and time. “Her paintings reveal the complex nature of identity and seek cohesion like the iridescent layers of a natural pearl” says the gallery.

LAST CHANCE Vian Sora: House of Pearls
2024-12-05
The Third Line’s first solo exhibition with Louisville-based artist Vian Sora features new paintings and works on paper that explore pearls as “a metaphor for achieving stability and the needed structural integrity for life itself to regenerate”. Sora draws on her experiences as a war survivor and immigrant (she escaped Iraqi following the US invasion of Iraq) to reflect on the uncertainty of existence and the complex nature of identity; she works with meticulous layering of colours and texture to depict imagined landscapes and ocean scenes marked with distorted Arabic calligraphy and vivid colours.

Vian Sora: House of Pearls
2024-10-31
New paintings and works on paper from the Louisville-based artist that explore pearls as “a metaphor for achieving stability and the needed structural integrity for life itself to regenerate”. Drawing on her experiences as a war survivor and immigrant (Iraqi-born, she sought refuge in Dubai following the US invasion of Iraq) Sora reflects on the uncertainty and shifting boundaries of existence, capturing the physical, mental, and emotional toll experienced across nations, cultures, and time. “Her paintings reveal the complex nature of identity and seek cohesion like the iridescent layers of a natural pearl” says the gallery. To 5 December.
Above: Vian Sora, Olivine (2024)

LAST CHANCE Khalid Jauffer: Looking, dwelling, leaving
2024-06-28
Jauffer is an artist who deals in the metaphoric potential of everyday objects, find the ironies in his everyday surroundings ad teasing out the spatial, poetic relationships between his subjects and their frangible correlation to human beings. “Discarded objects and broken things are legible to a bypasser primarily as ends, trash, the leftovers of a story that’s done being told; it is through a process of care and attention that Khalid transforms found ends into beginnings, unravelling tightly wound threads of human fragility encased in unremarkable shells … The simple act of looking is a necessary precursor to finding, it is crucially differentiated from ‘seeking’ in that it is open-ended: it doesn’t prescribe its outcome …”

LAST CHANCE Ala Ebtekar: The Sky of the Seven Valleys
2024-06-28
Ebtekar’s exhibition, is presented as “one work in seven chapters”, each composed of one to four doorway-sized panels that combine multi-wavelength photographic processes with the artist’s distinctive cloud-making brushstrokes. Inspired by Farid ud-Din Attar’s Sufi poem Conference of the Birds, Ebtekar’s series follows the journeys of 30 birds through seven valleys of enlightenment: Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Wonderment, Poverty, and Annihilation. Says the gallery: “As spectators confront these larger-than-life prints, they find themselves immersed in a landscape where the atmosphere itself becomes the canvas of the cosmos, blurring the boundaries between observer and the observed”.

Khalid Jauffer: Looking, dwelling, leaving
2024-05-07
Jauffer is an artist who deals in the metaphoric potential of everyday objects, find the ironies in his everyday surroundings ad teasing out the spatial, poetic relationships between his subjects and their frangible correlation to human beings. “Discarded objects and broken things are legible to a bypasser primarily as ends, trash, the leftovers of a story that’s done being told; it is through a process of care and attention that Khalid transforms found ends into beginnings, unravelling tightly wound threads of human fragility encased in unremarkable shells … The simple act of looking is a necessary precursor to finding, it is crucially differentiated from ‘seeking’ in that it is open-ended: it doesn’t prescribe its outcome …”
To 28 June.

Ala Ebtekar: The Sky of the Seven Valleys
2024-05-07
Ebtekar’s exhibition is presented as “one work in seven chapters”, each composed of one to four doorway-sized panels that combine multi-wavelength photographic processes with the artist’s distinctive cloud-making brushstrokes. Inspired by Farid ud-Din Attar’s Sufi poem Conference of the Birds, Ebtekar’s series follows the journeys of 30 birds through seven valleys of enlightenment: Quest, Love, Knowledge, Detachment, Unity, Wonderment, Poverty, and Annihilation. Says the gallery: “As spectators confront these larger-than-life prints, they find themselves immersed in a landscape where the atmosphere itself becomes the canvas of the cosmos, blurring the boundaries between observer and the observed”.
To 28 June.

LAST CHANCE Farah Al Qasimi: Toy World
2024-04-19
The Third Line’s fourth solo exhibition with Farah Al Qasimi, Brooklyn based but Abu Dhabi born, is a collection of still and moving images in colour and – for the first time – black and white too.
“Black and white images automatically historicize,” she says. Adds the gallery: “The glossy veneer of history allows us to indulge in theory immune from personal responsibility. Too often, we forget that the now we live is but prototype for future history.” This looks like being an important show, about images, meaning and how the links between them need to be decoded. “All we have are our sigils, these images. Without them, we lie alone, prostrate in the desert under a starless sky …”

Farah Al Qasimi: Toy World
2024-02-27
The Third Line’s fourth solo exhibition with Farah Al Qasimi, Brooklyn based but Abu Dhabi born, is a collection of still and moving images in colour and – for the first time – black and white too.
“Black and white images automatically historicize,” she says. Adds the gallery: “The glossy veneer of history allows us to indulge in theory immune from personal responsibility. Too often, we forget that the now we live is but prototype for future history.” This looks like being an important show, about images, meaning and how the links between them need to be decoded. “All we have are our sigils, these images. Without them, we lie alone, prostrate in the desert under a starless sky …”
To 19 April.
Above: Farah Al Qasimi, Camel Bones n.d. (archival inkjet print)

Kamran Samimi: Before Nature (I Am Both Created and Destroyed)
2024-01-11
Kamran Samimi’s first exhibition with The Third Line draws inspiration from the land’s rich tapestry of natural materials. Delving into the concealed narratives of the UAE’s mountainous terrain, Samimi’s practice is deeply rooted in a profound sense of place. As he explores the dynamics between human and non-human ancestors, his multicultural identity (Iranian/Norwegian, raised in rural Hawai’i) lends a distinctive perspective to unravelling these connections and conflicts.
Samimi has harnessed the organic shapes of the UAE’s mountains and rocks for his Translations series. Alongside the paintings is a large stone sculpture titled Unbroken Column to be displayed outdoors in Alserkal Avenue.
To 16 February.
Above: Kamran Samimi, Meditation on Rain III (2023)

Pouran Jinchi: Fly Like Dandelions
2024-01-11
Pouran Jinchi was inspired to embark on this new body of work after reading an article about a Guatemalan farmer forced to flee due to the impact of climate change on agriculture; her inspiration for this series stems from landscapes affected by climate change, such as ghost forests and arid lands.
In her paintings she merges traditional calligraphy techniques with abstraction, using written characters to delve into the complexities of perception, reality, and meaning. The core motif is a repeated Persian character for ‘trees’, used to depictions of trees and tree trunks in a way that allows legibility to gradually morph into an artistic form. The inclusion of dots, a fundamental starting point in Islamic calligraphy, contributes to the portrayal of an arid landscape, symbolising the lingering memories of a life that once was. The dandelion seed pod, transformed into a calligraphic symbol, drifts across these landscapes in Jinchi’s paintings – a powerful representation of the resilient migrants who, much like dandelion seeds, find themselves displaced yet determined to navigate a new path.
To 16 February.
Above: Pouran Jinchi, Fly Like Dandelions 9 (2023)

Nima Nabavi and Jason Seife: Duality
2023-11-14
New works by two artists working together in symbiosis – pairings of canvases that are mixed and matched (the precise dimensions of each canvas are the same) but not exact: the works are cousins, not siblings. Geometry was the common ground, “a call and response between Seife and Nabavi’s own particular approaches to how colour and form can be shaped” as the gallery puts it.
To 5 January.
Above: Nima Nabavi and Jason Seife, Noon (2022)

Sahand Hesamiyan: Prolepsis
2023-09-28
The Third Line’s third solo exhibition with Sahand Hesamiyan is a collection of sculptures that celebrate his dedication to steel as a 3D medium and shine a light on a number of long-cherished yet unrealised projects.
While Hesamiyan is known for ambitious large-scale works, this show presents miniatures of projects that remain unrealised but not forgotten. By blending the precise geometric principles of Islamic architecture with his own minimalistic sensibilities, this work not only highlights the fundamental design and conceptual significance but also underscores their pivotal role in shaping the history of Islamic art.
To 3 November.
Above: Sahand Hesamiyan, Kanoon I (2020)

Lamya Gargash: Isthmus
2023-05-23
Lamya Gargash’s fifth solo show at the gallery celebrates the artist’s poetics of space, recounting human experiences throughout different geographies without the direct presence of the human figure. “Photographing selections of objects, furniture pieces, window details, and wall trimmings speaks louder than the sum of these individual design decisions – each interior element embodies a human quality and expectations of audience preferences of a certain decade, socio-economic situation, and culture.”
The title is a metaphor for capturing interiors in spaces as disparate as the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, Hotel Acao in Atami, and the QE2 in Dubai. The viewer is invited to look around the exhibition with a blank mind and guess which photograph was taken where …
Curated by Sophie Mayuko Arni; runs in Gallery 1 at The Third Line to 21 July.

Shabahang Tayyari: Stop counting the waves following me, you seabirds!
2023-05-23
This solo exhibition explores themes of uniformity, replication, flatness, originality, fiction, and exclusivity within the frame of each painting, but also between the different frames, and throughout the overall arrangement of the works.
The deliberate arrangement of the paintings, with four triangular corner pieces along with the orientation of the waves purposefully guides viewers on a clockwise journey through the exhibition. Numbered and titled in tandem, the waves evoke the three-dimensional maquettes traditionally employed by performers to emulate the fluid motion of the ocean, while their outline drawings are informed by the curves and harmonies of Persian-Arabic calligraphy.
Runs in Gallery 2 at The Third Line to 21 July.

Bady Dalloul: A country without a door and a window
2023-05-23
Bady Dalloul’s solo show comprises a series of 200 miniature drawings displayed inside pocket matchboxes. The vividly coloured and seemingly childlike images sharply contrast with the harsh reality of the stories they depict of the Syrian civil war; by re-appropriating images from the media, Dalloul invokes a deeply personal and emotive connection to the conflict.
This body of work offers an intimate glimpse into Dalloul’s childhood, rooted in the games he played with his brother at the age of ten. The drawings are inspired by the fictional countries that Dalloul and his brother created by adding new elements to the visible depictions on postage stamps using black pen and coloured pencil to create new geopolitical territories. Dalloul later refined this technique to explore how propaganda and folklore images contribute to the construction of identities.
To 21 July.
