Weekly UAE museum and gallery guide: From performance art to Pierre Dunoyer's solo show

Plus, Vian Sora's abstract paintings influenced by pearls and Rand Abdul Jabbar's sculpture showcase

Dubai-based Iraqi artist Rand Abdul Jabbar's solo exhibition focuses on preserving and reclaiming her homeland. Photo: Lawrie Shabibi

As the art season kicks off, the diversity of the UAE's artists and their work is showcased across Dubai and Sharjah. From reclaiming and preserving myths, to looking to nature to make sense of violence, here are four shows to check out this weekend.

The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia in Sharjah and Dubai

The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia is a performance that looks at ancient and recent history. Photo: Sharjah Art Foundation

The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia premieres in the Arab world with performances in two locations in the UAE.

Blending performance, video, photography and installation, the narrative explores the discovery of the ancient Roman city Orthosia in 2007 in Nahr Al Bared, a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and its effects on the descendants of the Palestinian families that fled the Nakba to live there.

Saturday, 8.30pm, Bait Gholoum Ibrahim, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah; and Sunday, 7pm, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai

Pierre Dunoyer's Object of Thought at Opera Gallery

Jaune by French artist Pierre Dunoyer will be on show at his solo exhibtion with Opera Gallery. Photo: Opera Gallery

French artist Pierre Dunoyer's first solo show with Opera Gallery at their DIFC location will feature 19 of his paintings, created between 1986 and 2008.

Dunoyer’s aesthetic involves the thick application of bold-coloured paint on plain, flat backgrounds. His practice focuses on the concept that paintings are objects of thought as opposed to sources of knowledge and learning. These “painted thoughts” merge elements of the abstract expressionist and colour field movements through his use of colour and expressive brushstrokes with his personal and very thoughtful compositions.

Until November 27; DIFC, Dubai

Vian Sora's House of Pearls at The Third Line

Vian Sora's Olavine. She creates imagined landscapes and ocean scenes marked with distorted Arabic calligraphy. Photo: The Third Line

The solo exhibition of the US-based Iraqi-American artist Vian Sora explores concepts of violence through the metaphor and the process of pearl creation. Her large-scale, abstract, colourful paintings and works on paper also draw on her experiences as a war survivor and immigrant.

Through the layers of paint and the relationships between colour and process, Sora conjures imagined landscapes and ocean scenes blended with distorted Arabic calligraphy, creating surfaces and effects that have pearl-like luminosity.

Until December 5; Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

Rand Abdul Jabbar's Molding Anew at Lawrie Shabibi

Dubai-based Iraqi artist Rand Abdul Jabbar is having her first solo exhibition with gallery Lawrie Shabibi. Photo: Lawrie Shabibi

Abu Dhabi-based Iraqi artist Rand Abdul Jabbar’s first solo show with gallery Lawrie Shabibi builds on her previous body of work using sculpture to explore myths as a means to preserve and transform the cultural legacy of her motherland.

Abdul Jabbar creates an iconography of forms, developing an evolving language of signs and symbols that are based on influences such as Mesopotamian mythology and contemporary narratives.

Until December 4; Alserkal Avenue, Dubai