Exhibitions to Visit in Dubai - Winter 2025/2026
A new season of exhibitions is upon us, and below are the ones I’d like to visit in Dubai. I am certain more will be announced closer to their opening dates, and I will update this list if more exhibitions that interest me are announced.
Images and text are from the exhibition websites/Instagram accounts.
Update (January 18): New additions to the list, and all the exhibitions now appear in the order of latest opening dates.
The importance of staying quiet
3. Fahd Burki I
Grey Noise, Alserkal Avenue
February 8 - April 7
Fahd Burki, Loner, 2025
The third presentation in ‘The importance of staying quiet’ opens with ‘Fahd Burki I', a new body of paintings that continues an excavation of the image. Focusing entirely on two-dimensional works, the exhibition explores depth, texture, and curvature, drawing at times from architectural form and at others from nature.
Huma Shoaib: Fractal
XVA Gallery
February 7 - March 5
Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple geometric design that can be scaled up or down.We know that the structure of existence develops on fractals, be it hidden to the eye or at a cosmic level. As per spiritual concept this presence of fractal construction gives way to the notion of divine being present in every level of reality. There is a sense of perfection and infinity which resonates with one single entity that creates this vastness.
Reem Ali: On Practicing Recovery
Ikka Dubai, Hyatt Centric Jumeirah
February 4 - 28
On Practicing Recovery presents recovery as an ongoing, non-linear process shaped by memory, interior life, and domestic space. Through photography and video installations, the works dwell in the aftermath, where restoration unfolds through repetition, quiet gestures, and sustained attention. The exhibition reflects on women’s inner lives as sites of care, survival, and continuous renewal, inviting viewers into tender yet unsettling narratives that reveal the subtle emotional pressures of domestic spaces.
LUX in Dhalam
1604 Art Space, Blue Bay Tower, Business Bay
January 30 - February 15
An exhibition where five artists turn a narrow gallery into a portal between light and darkness. They use objects as a playful way to explore how humans sense, translate, and understand things that cannot be fully explained in words. Across symbols, suns, a giant paper plane, wordplay, and rituals, the artists across as translators, inviting visitors to cross the threshold and witness how the objects become mediators between the two worlds. The show is witty, wonder-driven, and precise: metaphysics with a grin.
Artists: Laura Xenopol, Khalid Al Amimi, Metha Naser, Sara Almaazmi, Yoonsik Chico Park
Jumana Emil Abboud: The Storyteller and the Obedient Tide
Jameel Arts Centre
January 28 - June 28
Jumana Emil Abboud, Our Other Half (detail), 2022
Through a deep engagement with storytelling, folktales and ritual, Abboud’s work is attuned to land and to the water sources like springs, wells and rivers that sustain it. Drawing on the lineage of Palestinian folktales, she traces their continued resonance in the present. Abboud attends to how stories inhabit landscapes, shape personal histories and collective memory, and create an enchanted relationship to land.
Curated by Indranjan Banerjee.
https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/jumana-emil-abboud-the-storyteller-and-the-obedient-tide/
Anahita Razmi: The Task Of The Mythologist
Carbon 12, Alserkal Avenue
January 17 - March 20
Anahita Razmi, WORLD MUSIC #10 (The Sound of An Eternal Emoji), 2026
In his canonical text Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes analyzes how myths are constructed through signs and symbols. Focusing on Western pop culture, he considers how “modern myths” are created by everyday words and objects.
Anahita Razmi builds on this philosophical premise to explore global power structures embedded in our material and virtual worlds alike. For Razmi, symbols like the fingers-crossed emoji, a Turkish talismanic shirt, or a ‘90s Britpop emblem have unstable meanings, shifting with context and use.
Saif Azzuz: Invisible Fish
Lawrie Shabibi, Alserkal Avenue
January 17 - March 20
Saif Azzuz, Detail of 'Algae bloom 2', 2025
Invisible Fish dives into the UAE’s maritime past and its shifting ecological present. Through scales, algae, and the memory of gargour traps, Saif Azzuz maps the waters that connect us across cultures and coastlines.
https://www.lawrieshabibi.com/exhibitions/200-invisible-fish-saif-azzuz/overview/
Sarah McEneaney: Creative Non-Fiction
Taymour Grahne Projects, Alserkal Avenue
January 17 - April 9
Sarah McEneaney, Ranch Living, 2025
For nearly five decades, Sarah McEneaney has devoted her practice to a singular theme, the meticulous chronicling of her own life. In a new exhibition on view at Taymour Grahne Projects, the artist presents a series of paintings that chart the latest moments and milestones in a life.
Sarah McEneaney’s autobiographical paintings feature domestic interiors, intimate self-portraits, her studios, her animals, her neighbourhoods, travels, and community spaces. It’s the totality of a life, rendered in an engaging and evolving visual diary, sublimating the deeply personal into the universal.
https://taymourgrahne.com/exhibitions/sarah-mceneaney-creative-non-fiction
Aïda Muluneh: This Bloom I Borrow
Efiɛ Gallery, Alserkal Avenue
January 17 - April 5
Developed during her residency with Efie Gallery, this new body of work unveils hand painted acrylic and silk screen printed photographic works, extending her iconic interventions on the human body directly onto canvas. The result is a luminous and tactile exploration of form, gesture, and surface, where photography and painting converge.
https://efiegallery.com/articles/this-bloom-i-borrow-aïda-muluneh
Urdu Worlds
Ishara Art Foundation
January 16 - May 31
Ali Kazim, 'Untitled (Mara’s Army II)' (2022). Image courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary.
Urdu Worlds marks the first-ever contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language in the UAE.
Curated by Hammad Nasar, the exhibition is a visual conversation around language between Ali Kazim and Zarina, and the first comprehensive presentation of Kazim’s works in the GCC. The show explores how language provides the tools with which we create and shape our internal ‘worlds’.
Words, rather than simply describing our surroundings, give rise to our private lived experiences and shared cultural understandings.
Peripheral Acts: For Those Here by Sara Masinaei
Studio 13, Bel Jafla Complex, Warehouse 13, Al Quoz
January 1 - 31
“Positioned high on an industrial wall and facing a road, the artwork is not intended to be read closely or intellectually, but to be felt in passing. The piece consists of two horizontal panels that function together as a single continuous gesture. The colours are drawn from tones that echo workwear, night shifts, dust and heat. A horizon line runs across both panels, from which subtle metallic fringes emerge. These reflective strands respond to light, wind, and time of day creating quiet movement and change. Rather than demanding attention, the work offers a brief visual rest, a moment of lightness within the industrial landscape.” — Sara Masinaei
https://www.instagram.com/peripheral_acts
https://www.instagram.com/studiothirteen_dxb/
https://www.instagram.com/saramasinaei
https://www.saramasinaei.com
Observers of Change
Etihad Museum
December 24, 2025 - June 30, 2026
The exhibition traces the evolution of the UAE’s artistic identity over five decades. Drawing from the Barjeel Art Foundation collection it features more than 60 works by pioneering and contemporary artists who have lived and worked in the UAE since 1971. Their works document the nation’s rapid social, economic, and urban transformation through painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media.
Curated by Rémi Homs.
Artists: Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Khalil Abdulwahed, Ali Al Abdan, Ammar Al Attar, Afra Al Dhaheri, Mahra Al Falahi, Reem Al Ghaith, Nujoom Alghanem, Moosa Al Halyan, Fatma Al Joker, Hessa Al Joker, Hala Al Kouatli, Diaa Allam, Hashel Al Lamki, Salma Al Merri, Hussain Al Mossawi, Ziad Al Najjar, Miramar Al Nayyar, Abdul Qader Al Rais, Ismail Al Rifai, Farah Al Qasimi, Mohammed Al Qassab, Noor Al Suwaidi, Ziad Antar, Mattar Bin Lahej, Lateefa Bint Maktoum, eL Seed, Ahmed Emad, Rami Farook, Lamia Gargash, Hazem Harb, Layla Juma, Mohammed Kazem, Fatma Lootah, Najat Makki, Mohamed Mandi, Camelia Mohebi, Faeza Mubarak, Nasir Nasrallah, Munira Nuseibeh, Driss Ouadahi, Sameeha Rajab, Nabil Safwat, Abdul Raheem Salem, Hassan Sharif, Hussain Sharif, Obaid Suroor, Yacoub Yousef
https://www.instagram.com/etihadmuseum/
https://www.instagram.com/barjeelart/
Hybrid Vistas
NIKA Project Space, Al Khayat Avenue
November 25, 2025 - February 2, 2026
Katya Muromtseva - No Such Thing As Day and Night, 2024
Hybrid Vistas explores how landscape is transformed in an age of post-human thought, climate disruption, and hybrid perception.
Painting becomes a tool whose boundaries are pushed, stretched, and even dismantled: landscape appears not as a stable view of nature, but as a dream, an algorithm, a bodily projection, or a fantasy of machine consciousness. It unfolds in a space where nature is no longer “natural” but imagined—artificially assembled, re-experienced through code, memory, and mediated vision. In this shifting condition, landscape becomes what Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject: dispersed, fragmented, and too vast or unstable to grasp in its entirety.
Artists: Adel Abidin, Ali Kaeini, Daniele Genadry, Katya Muromtseva, Melissa Rios
The Sky Appears in You
1604 Art Space, Blue Bay Tower, Business Bay
December 11 - 21
In such hectic and unpredictable times, we are prone to outrage and cynicism. We settle into default modes of reacting to and critiquing existing systems. But it takes an entirely different energy and attitude to build the world we want. To imagine better and more sustainable futures, we must take a more hopeful and receptive attitude. We need optimism, openness, curiosity. This exhibition aims to showcase the reflective translucence required to reimagine our world. You are encouraged to explore: which sky appears in you?
Curated by Kimia Domire.
Artists: Aala Oni, Majid Majidi, Rabia Javed, Zohreh Mohammadhosseinpour
https://www.1604artspace.com/exhibitions-events/show-all/the-sky-appears-in-you
Woven
Total Arts Gallery, The Courtyard
Until December 31
Woven explores the universal language of weaving, a practice that transcends borders, generations, and disciplines. From the intricate handwoven textiles of African tribes to the refined craftsmanship of Iranian carpets, the exhibition brings together objects and artworks that share a common lineage of interlacement. Both a functional necessity and an artistic expression, weaving embodies cultural, historical, and aesthetic dimensions. This exhibition highlights how this ancient craft continues to inspire contemporary creativity, preserving traditions while fostering innovation.
Ongoing exhibitions from the autumn season:
The importance of staying quiet
2. Lala Rukh II
Grey Noise, Alserkal Avenue
Until January 17, 2026
Lala Rukh, Beruwela a, b, c, 1996/2025 (detail)
The importance of staying quiet is a year-long dialogic exchange between Saira Ansari and Umer Butt. Through research, readings, and exhibition-making, the programme aims to present a distinct perspective on abstraction from Pakistan.
The second presentation as part of The importance of staying quiet is titled:
2. Lala Rukh II
The second exhibition of The importance of staying quiet completes the two-part observational inquiry into Lala Rukh’s photographic practice.
Lala Rukh I presented a selection of photographs from the artist’s archives during her years at the University of Chicago (1974-76). Its speculative framework helped us to stage the evolution of Lala’s photographic sensibility, as she refined her sense of composition, framing, and perception.
For Lala Rukh II, we wanted to see how this inquiry could be extended to works from the late-1970s onward, showing how her practice moved toward abstraction.
A Cage Went in Search of a Bird
1x1 Gallery, Alserkal Avenue
Until January 28, 2026
Dilip Chobisa, Who owns it? - 4, 2024
In A Cage Went in Search of a Bird, architecture becomes a seeker—a body in search of breath, a form in search of presence. The exhibition asks: what happens when structure outlives its purpose, when fragments become the only traces of what once held life? By situating architecture within this metaphorical and emotional terrain, the exhibition invites viewers to reconsider not just how we build, but how we inhabit—how the spaces we create continue to seek us, long after we’ve left them behind.
Artists: Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Dilip Chobisa, Gigi Scaria, Martand Khosla, M. Pravat, Nida Bangash, Pallavi Arora, Parul Sharma, Pooja Iranna, Praveen, Vibha Galhotra, Vivek Vilasini
https://www.1x1artgallery.com/home
https://alserkal.online/event/a-cage-went-in-search-of-a-bird-architecture-as-metaphor https://privateviews.artlogic.net/2/341549b4e23eb5732ab469/
Bady Dalloul: Self-portrait with a cat I don’t have
Jameel Arts Centre
Until February 22, 2026
Bady Dalloul repurposes everyday materials—including books, matchboxes, board games and magazines—to create surprising dialogues across cultures and genres. He elevates everyday narratives into epics, bridges high and low brow, and importantly, connects non-Western cultures, at times unexpectedly, outside of conventional delineations and Eurocentric gaze.
Blending autobiographical anecdotes with stories of individuals he encounters, the artworks feature fragile heroes and ordinary people navigating systems larger than themselves.
Curated by Lucas Morin.
https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/bady-dalloul-self-portrait-with-a-cat-i-dont-have/
Poetry of Birds
L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, Dubai Design District
Until April 25, 2026
Piel Frères, Belt buckle depicting a peacock feather, c. 1900, Cloisonné enamel on brass and glass
"Poetry of Birds" explores the timeless symbolism of birds in arts, poetry, and jewelry, focusing on the dialogue between 19th and 20th century Western jewelry and Islamic arts, with poetry as the common thread.
The exhibition is inspired by Farid al-din Attar's Conference of the Birds and is conceived as a poetic experience, beginning with a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, followed by a bejeweled display of bird species and culminating in contemplation of an aviary of imaginary birds by French jeweler Pierre Sterlé (1905-1978).
Exceptional jewels, precious objects, and gouaché drawings depicting birds from jewelers such as Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, and Boucheron, are showcased alongside Middle Eastern works of art from the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization and Dubai Museums. Contemporary photography from Emirati photographer Faisal Al Rais is also displayed.
https://www.lecolevancleefarpels.com/me/en/exhibition/exhibition-poetry-of-birds
Interwoven
House of Arts, Expo City Dubai, Unity Quarter B - 20 Sunrise Avenue
Until December 2026
Khalid Mezaina, The Palm Tree of Life, 2019
Across the Gulf, weaving has long connected people and place. Interwoven gathers artists and designers who reimagine this heritage, where fibre becomes spirit, gesture becomes story, and tradition continues through making together.
Curated by Alia AlShamsi.
Artists:
Ahmed AlAjmi, AlZaina Lootah, Ghada Khunji, Khalid Mezaina, Mariam Al-Homaid, Munira AlShami, Nasir Nasrallah, Noura Alserkal, Sara Alkhayal, Sarah AlUlaqi
https://www.houseofartsdubai.com
https://www.expocitydubai.com/en/things-to-do/attractions/house-of-arts/