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.
Hybrid Vistas
NIKA Project Space, Al Khayat Avenue
November 25 - 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.
Urdu Worlds
Ishara Art Foundation
January 16 - May 31
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.
Anahita Razmi: The Task Of The Mythologist
Carbon 12, Alserkal Avenue
January 17 - March 20
WORLD MUSIC #08 (The Sound Of Algorithmic Grief), 2025, Framed photoprint of analogue exposures on out-of-production sound recording film (Washi S), 100 x 100 cm, projected backdrop: “TALISMANIC STATE”, 4K Video, 2025
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, 203.2 x 152.4 cm
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
Jumana Emil Abboud: The Storyteller and the Obedient Tide
Jameel Arts Centre
January 28 - June 28, 2026
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/
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
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/