• A Writing Practice: The Writers’ Workshop

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    The second of six sessions for this writing seminar led by Sarah Afaneh designed for writers at any stage of their practice. It comprises six sessions held across three months, alternating between guided teaching and communal workshops. In this workshop [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • A Writing Practice: Penmanship as Friendship

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    "A welcoming space to write alongside others and find your voice on the page" in the form of a writing seminar led by Sarah Afaneh designed for writers at any stage of their practice. It comprises six sessions held across [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Maktaba: A Speculative Thought Circle – Sound

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Maktaba is 421's monthly gathering dedicated to collective reading, viewing, and discussion across disciplines. For its final iteration this season, researcher and sonic practitioner Safeyya Alblooshi will guide the conversation around sound, soundscapes, and interventions within sound cultures; texts shared [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Ahmad AlAttar: Human in the Loop

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Human in the Loop is a sound-based interactive installation that takes the form of a game of hide-and-seek between visitors and an unseen algorithm. Hanging ropes are suspended from the ceiling and visitors are invited to pull on them; each [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • On Spectacle Interventions with 421 Resident Alumni

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    "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 [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Postcard Poems with Balqees Alhawamdeh

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Writer and poet Balqees Alhawamdeh invites participants to explore poetry in an approachable and creative way by crafting a short poem as a visual composition using colour, collage, and form. It starts with a line from a poem or a [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Maktaba: A Speculative Thought Circle II

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Maktaba is 421's monthly gathering dedicated to collective reading, viewing, and discussion across disciplines. For this second iteration, multidisciplinary and performance artist Yoonsik Chico Park leads a dialogue around performance studies: together, participants will "examine, synthesise, and speculate the alternative [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Rays, Ripples, Residue

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This major exhibition marks the ten-year anniversary of 421 Arts Campus and offers a chance to reflect on emergent artistic practices in the UAE, their possibilities, and challenges for the future. Featuring video, performance, installation, and multimedia works, it invites [ ... ]

    Free
  • Family Day at 421

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    A day full of gallery adventures, stories, and hands-on activities for families. It begins with a collective exploration of the idea of 'ripples', riffing on the current 421 exhibition Rays, Ripples, Residue; the tour concludes with a reading of Colorful [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Localized Futures: Education

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    421's Winter 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 [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Localized Futures: Collective Heritage

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    A key element in 421's Winter season is Localized Futures: Conversations by 421 x afikra, a four-part series of talks and panel discussions developed in collaboration with afikra. The series aims to explore the future of key cultural and civic [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Rays, Ripples, Residue

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This major exhibition marks the ten-year anniversary of 421 Arts Campus via a chance to reflect on emergent artistic practices in the UAE, their possibilities, and challenges for the future. Featuring video, performance, installation, and multimedia works, it invites conversations [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Unstable Grounds: 2025 MFA Graduate Exhibition

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    For the fourth time, this exhibition shows work by students completing the two-year Master of Fine Arts in Art and Media at NYUAD – Dima Abou Zannad, Bao, Adele Bea Cipste, Hala El Abora, Mowen Li (Amira), Jude Maharmeh, Safeya [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Ana Escobar Saavedra has a cross-disciplinary creative practice working on the frontiers of craft, art and design. Born and bred in Colombia, she is now established in the UAE; for the last few years, she has combined a personal studio [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Unstable Grounds: 2025 MFA Graduate Exhibition

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    For the fourth time, this exhibition shows work by students completing the two-year Master of Fine Arts in Art and Media at NYUAD – Dima Abou Zannad, Bao, Adele Bea Cipste, Hala El Abora, Mowen Li (Amira), Jude Maharmeh, Safeya [ ... ]

    Free
  • Ana Escobar Saavedra: It Starts Where It Ends

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Ana Escobar Saavedra has a cross-disciplinary creative practice working on the frontiers of craft, art and design. Born and bred in Colombia, she is now established in the UAE; for the last few years, she has combined a personal studio [ ... ]

    Free
  • Performance Co/Lab

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An ongoing programme of performance exercises such as contact improvisation, breath work, acting warm-ups, games, and techniques aimed at "performing artists, creatives, and curious individuals looking to explore movement practices. Instructors are multidisciplinary theatre artist and game designer Carlos Páez [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Collected Histories: Personal Archives and Documentation

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Collected Histories, a project co-founded by Hind Mezaina and Jasmine Soliman, aims to foster discussion on personal documentation and archiving "with an ultimate goal of inspiring and supporting individuals to become ‘citizen archivists’ by cataloguing, and exploring ways to self-publish [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Collected Histories: Personal Archives and Documentation

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Collected Histories, a project co-founded by Hind Mezaina and Jasmine Soliman, aims to foster discussion on personal documentation and archiving "with an ultimate goal of inspiring and supporting individuals to become ‘citizen archivists’ by cataloguing, and exploring ways to self-publish [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • LAST CHANCE Alla Abdunabi: Are your memories of me enough for you?

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Alla Abdunabi’s first solo exhibition presents a new body of work that critiques and engages with simulacra, a concept used in philosophy and cultural studies to analyse how symbols shape our perceptions of what is accepted as “real.” Alla Abdunabi [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Abdullah Al Saadi: Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An exhibition of ten works by the influential Khor Fakkan artist, one of the “Pioneer Five” who bolstered the contemporary art scene in the UAE in the 1980s and influenced a generation of artists in the region. Curated by Tarek [ ... ]

    Free
  • Fragments from Heaven: dir Adnane Baraka (2022)

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    In the bleak emptiness of the Moroccan desert, a nomad shepherd called Mohamed lives in a tent with his family. His way of life is disappearing; the land is so dry (presumably as a result of climate change) that there [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Performance Co/Lab

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An ongoing programme of performance exercises such as contact improvisation, breath work, acting warm-ups, games, and techniques aimed at "performing artists, creatives, and curious individuals looking to explore movement practices. Instructors are multidisciplinary theatre artist and game designer Carlos Páez [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Performance Soiree: 421 Performance Co//ective Showcase

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Performance Co//ective’s first showcase, featuring performances by the programme’s first cohort. These works, co-facilitated by Mary Chase and Carlos Paez Gonzalez, are the culmination of months of exploration in movement, writing, vocal expression, and more. Afterwards there's an opportunity to [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Block Barty

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    "Better than the art afterparty" claims 421. "We’re ramping up the art season with pop-up vendors, independent brands, eclectic workshops, diverse entertainment, neighbourhood walks, and obviously, more art ... Block Barty is for the 'art' people, the non-art art people, [ ... ]

    Free
  • Performance Co/Lab

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An ongoing programme of performance exercises such as contact improvisation, breath work, acting warm-ups, games, and techniques aimed at "performing artists, creatives, and curious individuals looking to explore movement practices. Instructors are multidisciplinary theatre artist and game designer Carlos Páez [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    We love this idea, and it's just the sort of thing that we'd hope for from an arts centre like 421. It's a writers’ group intended for writers to practice their craft without the pressures of producing a final outcome, [ ... ]

    Free
  • Alla Abdunabi: Are your memories of me enough for you?

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Alla Abdunabi’s first solo exhibition presents a new body of work that critiques and engages with simulacra, a concept used in philosophy and cultural studies to analyse how symbols shape our perceptions of what is accepted as “real.” The work [ ... ]

    Free
  • Abdullah Al Saadi: Sites of Memory, Sites of Amnesia

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An exhibition of ten works by the influential Khor Fakkan artist, one of the “Pioneer Five” who bolstered the contemporary art scene in the UAE in the 1980s and influenced a generation of artists in the region. Curated by Tarek [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Way of the Forest

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This travelling edition of the Colomboscope arts festival features work by 19 artists from South Asia and Africa. Taking over Galleries 1 and 2 inside 421 Arts Campus, it focuses on interdependence, custodianship, and restorative practices across rainforests, wilderness, mountain [ ... ]

    Free
  • Day 2 | Forest Cinema

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Three films selected from the two editions of Ghost, a triennial video and performance art series in Bangkok, that show how natural and manufactured subjects can haunt and possess novel forms of life and knowledge. Mangosteen dir Tulapop Saenjaroen (Thailand [ ... ]

    Free
  • Day 1 | Forest Cinema

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Dharamshala International Film Festival has a peripatetic and constantly changing programme called DIFF On the Road, part of the festival’s mandate to build networks of cinematic solidarity and to extend the space for discourse around independent cinema. In keeping with [ ... ]

    Free
  • Pencil In

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    We love this idea -- it's 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 [ ... ]

    Free
  • Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial: Globalisto – a Symphony for a Community

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This listening session, performance, and talk draws on the philosophy of Globalisto – the interplay of sound, memory, and identity in diasporic communities – developed by multidisciplinary artist and curator Ntshepe Tsekere (DJ Mo Laudi). Field recordings and Afro-electronic compositions [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Performance Co/Lab

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An ongoing programme of performance exercises such as contact improvisation, breath work, acting warm-ups, games, and techniques aimed at "performing artists, creatives, and curious individuals looking to explore movement practices. Instructors are multidisciplinary theatre artist and game designer Carlos Páez [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Way of the Forest

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    This travelling edition of the Colomboscope arts festival features work by 19 artists from South Asia and Africa. Taking over Galleries 1 and 2 inside 421 Arts Campus, it focuses on interdependence, custodianship, and restorative practices across rainforests, wilderness, mountain [ ... ]

    Free
  • Closing Program: Spring 2024 Exhibitions

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Most exhibitions open with a bang and close with much less fanfare, so 421 is to be commended for marking the end of its current shows – Mona Ayyash: The Clock Doesn’t Care and On a Timeline: 2024 MFA Graduate [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE On a Timeline: 2024 MFA Graduate Show

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Marking the third year of collaboration and an expanded partnership between 421 Arts Campus and NYUAD, the exhibition of work by students completing the two-year Master of Fine Arts in Art and Media at NYUAD showcases research and experimentation by [ ... ]

    Free
  • LAST CHANCE Mona Ayyash: The Clock Doesn’t Care

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    In her first solo exhibition, Mona Ayyash presents a collaborative video piece with a group of actors, dancers, and performance artists, focusing on small body movements. Selected through an open call, the artist’s collaborators committed to a long-term creative process [ ... ]

    Free
  • Uncharted Paths: DocuShorts in Focus

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An evening of short documentary films from the region, works by artists taking part in Image Nation Abu Dhabi's Arab Film Studios programme: Luminary: dir Nada Jahed Arabic, 9.5 mins A poetic portrait of a blind father who is strongly [ ... ]

    Free
  • Performance Co/Lab

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    An open invitation to all performing artists, creatives, and curious individuals looking to explore movement practices: participants will explore performance exercises such as contact improvisation, breath work, acting warm-ups, games, and techniques. Each session will introduce new and unique exercises [ ... ]

    Free, but pre-register
  • On a Timeline: 2024 MFA Graduate Show

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Marking the third year of collaboration and an expanded partnership between 421 Arts Campus and NYUAD, this exhibition of work by students completing the two-year Master of Fine Arts in Art and Media at NYUAD showcases research and experimentation by [ ... ]

    Free