Exhibitions to Visit in Dubai - Autumn 2026
NOTE:
Original post was published on September 21.
Updated on October 8 with additional exhibitions.
A new season of exhibitions in Dubai is underway, and after going through all the listings and press releases, these are the ones I’m interested in visiting. I’m happy to see a couple of new or recently opened spaces hosting exhibitions (OMIC, Mussawir Contemporary).
The exhibitions are added in the order of their opening dates. The first one is from the summer list, but since I’ve not yet visited it, I included it here.
Images and text are extracts from the exhibition websites/press releases/Instagram accounts.
Habeeb M. Abu-Futtaim: The Ongoing Performance of Melancholia & Songs in Solitude
Bayt AlMamzar
Until October 2, 2026
Habeeb M. Abu-Futtaim presents two interconnected exhibitions presenting multiple bodies of work developed over the past ten years, drawing from an artistic practice shaped by sustained research, investigation, and critical inquiry.
Rather than functioning as separate exhibitions, The Ongoing Performance of Melancholia and Songs in Solitude unfold as two interconnected chapters of a single artistic inquiry, moving between the personal and the political, revealing how solitude, memory, and collective imagination continually shape one another.
While Songs in Solitude reflects on the intimate space of artistic practice through playfulness, imagination, intimacy, and selfhood, The Ongoing Performance of Melancholia turns outward to examine the inherited performances of collective identity and the burden of unrealized political futures.
Working across painting, installation, performance, video, and writing, Abu-Futtaim investigates the construction and performance of collective identities, examining how inherited symbols, political imaginaries, and cultural narratives become internalized as expressions of belonging.
Curated by Mo Reda.
Hamad Almuzaini: Precarious Beings
Tashkeel, Nad Al Sheba
September 1 - October 11, 2026
Precarious Beings turns its attention to the quiet, often unnoticed elements that contribute to the formation of cities. From broken poles loosely securing an electrical box to a maintenance worker’s discarded glove, the works stem from accumulated observations of Kuwait City’s most ordinary details.
Revisiting these observations becomes a way to consider how meaning is produced within public space. What does it signify when something is left broken, adapted, or abandoned? How do informal gestures, everyday behaviours, and overlooked infrastructures contribute to a shared sense of place?
https://tashkeel.org/exhibitions/precarious-beings
Nothing Worth Mentioning
Kutubna Cultural Center, Nadd Al Hamar
September 5 – September 27, 2026
Fatima Albudoor, She and the Sea
“Can a feeling be archived?” is the question at the heart of Nothing Worth Mentioning, a photography exhibition featuring more than 40 works by 16 photographers based in the UAE.
The exhibition brings attention to finding beauty and meaning in the small moments of everyday life, personal rituals, routines, brief encounters, simple gestures and humble places we often overlook.
It reminds us that sometimes the things we dismiss as ordinary are the things that tell us who we are, where we come from, and what we remember.
Curated by Ola Allouz.
Artists:
Abdallah Alastad
Abdulla Al Ghurair
Abdulla Alblooshi
Aisha Esmaeilzadeh
Akhilesh Nair
April Ann Vocal
Ayesha Alyassi
Fatima Al Amiri
Fatima Albudoor
Judite Serafim
Latifa Almazrouei
Maitha Alqassmi
Maria Khodzhamberdieva
Mohamed Al Alawi
Ola Allouz
Preschelle Ann Bigueras
Sara Al Shamsi
The sky held it, the earth remembered
Ishara Art Foundation, Alserkal Avenue
September 11 - December 15, 2026
Sarker Protick, 16 Eskaton Garden I, from the series Dhaka 1217 (2011–2026)
The exhibition examines how land, water, and the cosmos serve as living archives of memory and history. Through photography, moving image, and installation, the exhibition proposes that the environment bears the material traces of ecological change, preserving them across deep time.
Artists:
Rohini Devasher
Sarker Protick
Shahana Rajani
https://www.ishara.org/exhibition/the-sky-held-it-the-earth-remembered/
ReVision
Mussawir Contemporary, Al Quoz 1
September 15 - October 5, 2026
Sophiya Khwaja
ReVision brings together works on paper that explore this space between thought and material form, tracing the ways memory, perception, landscape, and gesture take shape through the process of making.
Artists:
Behnoosh Feiz
Naazish Ata Ullah
Sara Masinaei
Sophiya Khwaja
Library Circles: Rend Beiruti
Jameel Arts Centre
September 16, 2026 - January 11, 2027
A research display by Rend Beiruti. Beiruti investigates the baqala as a vital urban entity in Dubai, exploring its history, its influence on urban development, and its role as a cultural signal. The project documents how these ubiquitous neighborhood grocery stores have both shaped and been shaped by Dubai’s rapid expansion over the past century.
The display maps these shifts, highlighting how the physical character of the baqala adapts across different areas: from historic streets to newer urban developments like JVC and Dubai Production City. Through a rich assemblage of photographs, mapping, and archival documents, the display brings together the findings of this urban investigation.
https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/library-circles-rend-beiruti/
Stephan Kaluza: From Dust to Bloom
JD Malat Gallery
September 16 - October 31, 2026
Stephan Kaluza’s painting practice is fundamentally concerned with depictions of nature—whether in the form of hyper-realistic oil-on-canvas works or near-abstract renderings. These two modes of painting should not be viewed as separate bodies of work; rather, they represent different states of the same subject—distinct stages in a process of transformation.
A seemingly idyllic scene is depicted. Yet, not everything in these images is pure nature: disruptions creep in, and appearances prove deceptive. The ostentatious beauty of nature—captured in the nunc stans, the timeless "now"—is thus rendered open to question. At first glance, the paintings appear to be precise, almost preservative images of an intact world—until a second layer emerges, sharply challenging what is being seen.
https://www.jdmalat.com/exhibitions/131-from-dust-to-bloom-dubai/
Essence of Egypt
Fann À Porter, Jumeirah
September 17 - November 25, 2026
Nabil Anani, Intifada, 1988
A presentation of Palestinian artistic journeys shaped in Egypt and inspired by its art and culture spanning from the 1960s to the early 2000s. The works reveal a diversity of media and approaches—ranging from printmaking and etching to mixed media, leather works, and large-scale compositions.
Despite their shared educational background, each artist developed a distinct visual language, responding to contemporary events and experiences. Considered together, the works offer insight into the influence of mobility, exchange and experimentation on the formation of modern Arab art.
Artists:
Abdul Rahman Al Muzayyen (b. 1943)
Mostafa Al Hallaj (1938-2002)
Nabil Anani (b. 1943)
Kamel Al Moghani (1944-2008)
Samira Badran (b. 1954)
Tayseer Barakat (b. 1959)
Nothing Unusual
OMIC Cultural Hub, Goshi Warehouse City, Al Quoz Industrial Area 3
September 18 - October 19, 2026
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gómez, Bami
Nothing here is particularly unusual. A landscape is still a landscape. A body remains a body. An object remains what we recognize it to be. And yet, somewhere between what we know and how it is seen, something shifts.
Nothing Unusual brings together a diverse group of artists whose distinct approaches transform familiar subjects into deeply personal visual experiences. Through color, material, texture, form, and imagination, the ordinary is not reinvented, but made newly visible.
Perhaps nothing unusual is happening. It's simply seen another way.
Curated by Narges Soleimanzadeh.
Artists:
Ali Ettehad
Curro Gómez
Elizaveta Pugacheva
Elham Shafaei
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gómez
Manish Mundra
Maryam Lamei
Nujoom Alghanem
Richa Nirwan
Solimar Miller
Talal Altukhaes
Tamer Karam
Shezad Dawood: The New Dream Machine Project
Jameel Arts Centre
September 19 - November 1, 2026
New Dream Machine Project (2011, 15 min)
Inspired by Brion Gysin’s prototype Dream Machine created in the 1960s, this film documents a concert featuring the acclaimed Bedouin: Master Musicians of Jajouka (the house band at Gysin’s ‘1001 Nights’ restaurant in Morocco) and a kinetic light sculpture, designed to emit hypnotic light waves to the audience. Edited to the same flicker rate and matching sonic rate of the rotation of the Dream Machine sculpture and filmed at the Cinematheque de Tanger, this work also pays tribute to Brian Jones’s cult album ‘Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka’ with contemporary musician Duke Garwood reprising Jones’s role on stage.
New Dream Machine Project II (2013, 14 min)
Cut to the same rpm (revolutions per minute) as the machine, the second film features the second staging of the kinetic light sculpture with a live performance by the experimental musical group Praed, in collaboration with the Paris-based soprano and saxophonist Stéphane Rives and electric guitar player Sharif Sehnaoui. Formed in 2006 by Swiss musician Paed Conca and Lebanese artist and musician Raed Yassin, the Praed duo experiments with a complex and vast terrain of sonic and musical influences and geographies. The performance took place at Parasol Unit London as part of Parasolstice – Winter Lights project in 2012.
https://jameelartscentre.org/whats-on/film-shezad-dawood-the-new-dream-machine-project/
Nour Taher: Giver Her A Name
Studio Thirteen, Al Quoz
September 20 - October 10, 2026
A showcase of Nour Taher's work developed during her artist residency at Studio Thirteen.
“What you see are self portraits, with a figure quietly existing in the background.
Carrying the voices of who I was who I am, and those who shaped me.
They remain with me, becoming a part of who I am.
Perhaps you carry someone too
Who is with you?
Listen...
Let them exist
Give them a name”
https://www.instagram.com/studiothirteen_dxb/
Sara Masinaei: Boundaries and Breaches
Dom Art Projects, Al Khayat Avenue
September 23 - October 18, 2026
Boundaries and Breaches explores the sensory and psychological experience of urban space. While it may appear liminal—a gap between destinations—this space is highly charged. It sustains personal memory, shapes our daily routines, and organises how we perceive the world around us. It preserves traces of use and loss, bearing witness to rupture, erosion, and forgetting.
Private World
Green Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue
September 23 – October 24, 2026
Sohrab Hura, The finally found each other, 2024
An intimate group exhibition exploring solitude, inward attention and personal experience.
Across the exhibition, intimacy takes different forms: through personal observation, fragments and fleeting moments, relationships and lived experience, or through atmospheric and psychologically charged spaces.
Artists:
Khaled Jarada
Lulua Alyahya
Rami Farook
Sohrab Hura
What the Sea Leaves Behind: Stories of fishing, memory and environmental resilience in the Gulf
Gulf Photo Plus, Alserkal Avenue
September 23 - November 7, 2026
Reinilda Dernison
The Gulf is a place of extremes. Its waters are among the warmest and most saline in the world, and its coastlines are being reshaped at extraordinary speed. Yet for generations, people have made their lives here by reading the sea: knowing where fish gather, when the tides turn, which creatures can be harvested, and when to stay ashore. Across Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, small-scale fishing communities are now navigating a sea that is changing beneath them. Rising temperatures and sea levels, altered salinity, coastal development and overfishing are placing growing pressure on both marine ecosystems and the people who depend on them.
Curated by Richa Syal.
Artists:
Maureen Daly
Reem Mohammed
Reinilda Dernison
https://gulfphotoplus.com/pages/what-the-sea-leaves-behind-2026
Dalal Al-Obaidi: Frogs, Jazz & Blisters
Taymour Grahne Projects, Alserkal Avenue
September 23 – November 10, 2026
Dalal Al-Obaidi takes us into a life split between two worlds, London and Kuwait.
This body of new paintings was sparked by considering what it means to live in two places, or "to be two Dalals" as the artist put it, without being entirely settled in either identity. The work was motivated by London, but inspired by life in Kuwait - a fairly accurate summation of the artist's life over the past few years. The exhibition's title, a memorable phrase, came to Al-Obaidi one night in London, when recalling one particular night of friends, music, laughter and dancing. It describes, she says, the feeling of "coming down from a high", the gradual settling back to the quieter pace of life in Kuwait after a whirlwind of experiences, emotions and impressions in London.
https://taymourgrahne.com/exhibitions/dalal-al-obaidi-frogs-jazz-and-blisters
The importance of staying quiet: 6. Open Forms
Grey Noise, Alserkal Avenue
September 23 - December 30, 2026
Zara Mahmood, Vignettes 4 (set of 6), 2025
Open Forms alludes to a way of looking that we have been negotiating since our art school years. We are drawn to artists with a certain peculiarity, whose work seems to emerge from a self-imposed stillness, at some distance from the noise around them. It is a desire to address how they approach conceptual developments that move away from narrative, focusing instead on making and the material through which the abstract is constructed. — Saira Ansari / Umer Butt
This is the sixth and final exhibition of the 2025-2026 iteration of ‘The importance of staying quiet’.
Artists:
Ali Kazim
Ayessha Quraishi
Bani Abidi
Fahd Burki
Faheem Abbas
Fatima Haider
Faraz Aamer Khan
Fazal Rizvi
Inaam Zafar
Iqra Tanveer
Lala Rukh
Mussarat Mirza
Sara Salman
Seher Shah
Shahid Sajjad
Zara Mahmood
Zubeida Agha
A Way Through: Archive of Resilience
Kutubna Cultural Center, Nadd Al Hamar
October 3 – December 7, 2026
Hind Tukan
A Way Through: Archive of Resilience is an exhibition born out of the question: How will this time be remembered and who will tell the stories of the people who live here? The exhibition is one of the outcomes of Kutubna’s initiative Documenting Culture in the Gulf in a Time of War, an oral history project centering the experiences of diverse people living in the Khaleej.
The exhibition brings together over 40 artists and contributors from different generations and cultural backgrounds. With over 70 works, the exhibition includes journals, poems, short stories and publications, embroidery, crochet, collage, paintings, digital works and photographs, showing the many ways, people responded to and documented this shared moment.
Participants:
Aabidah Rakhange (b. 2006, India)
Alina O'Dwyer (b. 1983, Russia)
Dr. Alzahraa Soliman (b. 1993, Egypt)
Anna Peshkova (b. 2000, Ukraine)
Asha Divakaran (b. 1979, India)
Asma Alali (b. 1998, UAE)
Bettina Kulakowski (Germany)
Carlie Manalac (b. 1998, Philippines)
Debra S. Mascarenhas (b. 1962, India)
Diana Hancinska (b. 1989, Slovakia)
Dwa bint Khalid Al Khalifa (b. 1987, Bahrain)
Essa Al Mohannadi (b. 1993, Qatar)
Fabi Faisel (b. 1999, India)
Fares Alsuwaidi (b. 1979, UAE)
Gaia Getty (b. 2021, Finland - Lebanon)
Gino Banola (b. 1990, Philippines)
Hind Tukan (b. 2005, Jordan)
Jacinta Sabaganga (b. 1995, Kenya)
Dr. Karima Alshomely (b. 1965, UAE)
Khulood Al Jabri (b. 1967, UAE)
Majd Al Henawi (b. 1993, Syria)
Maya Mahmood Saleh (UAE)
Melika Shahin (b. 1998, Iran)
Mona Al Khaja (b. 1958, UAE)
Mona Biswarupa Mohanty (b. 1977, India)
Mohamed Bin Hamad (b. 1985, UAE)
Nayyab Akram (b. 1992, United Kingdom - Pakistan)
Neveen Abu Samra (Palestine - Poland)
R. Tarrannum (b. 1982, India)
Saira Safwan (b. 1981, Pakistan)
Samar Farooq (United Kingdom)
Sana Waqar Khan (b. 1990, Pakistan)
Sara A. Madan (b. 1988, Bahrain)
Shaima Ali AlQassab (b. 1995, UAE)
Shatha Abueljebain (b. 2000, Kuwait)
Sorren Caryl Galiza (b. 1980, Philippines)
Tagreed Albaqshi (Saudi Arabia)
Taleb Saeed Bin Shaiban (UAE)
Tessy Koshy (b. 1980, India)
Vivienne Mendonca (b. 1975, United Kingdom)
Yun Kusanagi (Youness) (b. 1983, Morocco)
Living Rooms
OMIC Cultural Hub, Goshi Warehouse City, Al Quoz Industrial Area 3
October 9 - 19, 2026
Daria Avdeeva, Morning Coffee, 2025
An artist’s gaze often travels outward, searching landscapes, cities, and ideas for a subject. Living Room asks for the opposite: to look inward, toward the world that is closest to us. Here, home becomes more than a place to live. It becomes a world of subjects, memories, associations, and discoveries. The spaces we inhabit, the objects that surround us, the people we share them with, and the traces they leave behind become sources for observation, reflection, and creation.
Each artist turns their gaze toward this intimate world, finding within the familiar a space for exploration and a subject in its own right.
Curated by Narges Soleimanzadeh.
Artists:
Christina Gabriela
Daria Avdeeva
Mrs Helichrysum
Nika Sagamonyants
Rollie Mukherjee
Seungeun Cho
Tamar Vasilienko
Tanvi Patel
Matter of Light
Dom Art Projects, Al Khayat Avenue
October 27, 2026 - March 10, 2027
The Matter of Light takes on both the formal and perceptual aspects of light as it operates within modern and contemporary art. Light is what allows us to perceive the world around us. When we look at our surroundings, what we are seeing are not objects themselves, but rather the light that bounces off of them, communicating to us their contours.
But light also has other ways of affecting our perception. Throughout the history of the world, light has been assigned many different kinds of meaning, including the mystical, the metaphysical, and the sacred. Scientific advancements from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly discoveries related to microscopic matter and the theory of relativity turned the attention of the spheres of art and culture to the mechanisms of light. Modernism approached the topic from a formal, analytical method. And while throughout the last century artistic guidelines have changed dramatically, veering sharply from the dominance of modernist trends, this emphasis on formal analysis has now been incorporated into the body of contemporary art.
Curated by Eugenia Kikodze.
Artists:
Akram Zaatari
Andrey Grositsky
Armen Bugayan
Boris Turetsky
Blue Soup Group
David Ter-Oganyan
Dmitri Prigov
Eduard Steinberg
Elena Nemkova
Iced Architects
Ilya Kabakov
Kamal Boullata
Koka Ramishvili
Oleg Vassiliev
Pavel Pepperstein
PPSS Group
Susan Hefuna
Timo Nasseri
Vladimir Andreenkov
Yuri Zlotnikov
Zaha Hadid
Zoulikha Bouabdellah
Salah Elmur: Just as the Heart of a Mango is a Stone
Jameel Arts Centre
October 31, 2026 - March 14, 2027
Bringing together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera, this exhibition offers an immersive encounter with Salah Elmur’s world, one where memory, landscape and identity merge and ripple through time. This show, focusing on works produced after 2018, explores the artist’s shifting sense of belonging and distance from his homeland, Sudan, in times of exile and political rupture.
Curated by Zain Al Saie and Qutouf Elobaid.