This week’s exhibitions include a chance to see the work of Pablo Picasso up close. Considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, the exhibition Picasso, The Figure focuses on the Spanish-born artist's dedication to depicting the human form.
Abu Dhabi's Iris Projects hosts an exhibition by Emirati artist Shamsa Al Omaira titled Hard Like Tears, Soft Like Glass. The artworks reflect Al Omaira's experience with grief, memory preservation and finding the joy in everyday life.
Elsewhere, major institutional shows across Dubai and Sharjah continue to take stock of artistic practice in the region – from reflective group exhibitions and landmark solo presentations to photography and landscape-led shows that unfold across multiple venues and geographies.
Here are 14 exhibitions to see now in the UAE.
1. Glitch World at Art in Space
Aniline Studio's digital art exhibition features an animated trailer, life-size character prototypes and a range of merchandise, alongside interactive elements including themed digital games and an AI-powered character experience.
Glitch World is created by Diana Koroleva, a 12-year-old artist whose work draws on Japanese anime aesthetics while introducing original characters with distinct personalities and abilities.
Koroleva previously developed anime-inspired characters and virtual worlds, including Mystery Life, which evolved into an indie mini-anime series. She is currently refining Glitch World ahead of a wider digital release in the coming months.
January 24 to 30; 4pm-7.30pm; Dubai
2. I like to like what others are liking at Sharjah Art Foundation
Even from its title, Leda Catunda’s exhibition at Sharjah Art Foundation’s Al Mureijah Square seems like a self-reflective confession. And in a way, it is, prompting an introspection of desire, taste and identity.
I like to like what others are liking is Catunda’s largest solo presentation outside of Brazil. It brings together works dating back to the 1980s, including large-scale installations and watercolours that explore the overlap between the handmade and the mass-produced.
A leading voice of 1980s Brazilian art, Catunda fuses painting and sculpture, evolving from fabric-based pop assemblages to sensuous, baroque abstractions.
Until February 8; Saturday to Thursday, 9am-9pm; Friday, 4pm to 9pm; Sharjah
3. Al Wissam Script at Tashkeel
The solo exhibition by Wissam Shawkat surveys more than two decades of sustained experimentation and development in Arabic calligraphy.
The exhibition centres on Al Wissam Script, a calligraphic system that sits between tradition and innovation. Its letter forms draw on historical styles including Eastern Kufic, Thuluth, Diwani Jali and Ottoman tughras, reworked through years of hand-led repetition, testing and refinement.
Rather than emerging as a planned artistic project, Al Wissam Script developed organically from Shawkat’s design practice. Beginning in 2004 as hand-drawn solutions for contemporary logo and branding work, it evolved in response to the challenge of using Arabic letter forms in modern contexts without undermining the integrity of classical scripts.
Marking 22 years of continuous evolution, the exhibition presents Al Wissam Script as an ongoing practice that continues to adapt through use, observation and critical reassessment.
Until February 11; 8am-10pm; Dubai
4. And After at Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi
Curated by Dirwaza Curatorial Lab, And After features mixed-media works by 15 artists. The artworks explore the element of air through Arabian concepts such as sukoon, which denotes stillness; naseem, a gentle zephyr; and riyah, which refers to a turbulent gust.
Exhibiting artists include Yousif Abdulsaid – The florist from nothingness, Ammar Al Attar, Moza Al Falasi, Omar Al Gurg, Mariam Al Khoori, Jawad Al Malhi, Salmah Al Mansoori, Reem Al Mubarak, Abdulla Buhijji, Zara Mahmood, Iman Shaggag, Leila Shirazi, Mohammed Kazem, Ayman Zedani and Razan Al Sarraf. Together, their work invites visitors to reconsider their natural surroundings, particularly the subtle shifts that underline each season.
Until February 22; Saturday to Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday, 2pm to 8pm; Abu Dhabi
5. Self-portrait with a cat I don’t have at Jameel Arts Centre
In his debut institutional solo exhibition in the UAE, Bady Dalloul presents an autobiography that touches upon collective memory.
The French-Syrian artist uses books, board games, matchboxes and magazines to create layered works, narrative epics that challenge Eurocentric perspectives and definitions of art.
A highlight of the show, and one made specifically for the exhibition, is Age of Empires. The series of 50 works on paper draws from a 19th-century Japanese astrology manual to reflect upon the rise and demise of imperial power. The exhibition also features a recreation of Dalloul’s home studio in Dubai, featuring works that shed light on his itinerant life and practice that have led to travels across France, Japan and the UAE.
Until February 22; Saturday to Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday, noon-8pm; Dubai
6. Two Clouds in the Night Sky at Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi
Two Clouds in the Night Sky delves into the work and practice of Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, a pioneering Emirati artist with a singular process and aesthetic.
Much of his work is inspired by the geography and colour palette of his native Khor Fakkan. The city's cliffs and coral reefs feature in his art as allusions, or through their patterns and textures in paintings. In sculptures such as Fresh and Salt, they are used as a medium in themselves. In Between Sunrise and Sunset – the work he presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale – he reflects upon the changes in colour between dawn and dusk.
Until February 22; Saturday to Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday, 2pm to 8pm; Abu Dhabi
7. Qadera at Fann A Porter
The solo show by emerging Egyptian artist Abdelwahab Hawam marks his debut in the UAE. Qadera presents new works shaped by Hawam’s upbringing in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, in Egypt’s Gharbia Governorate, with its countryside, colour and close-knit community informing his visual language. Women sit at the centre of his surreal, narrative paintings, where exaggerated feminine forms are rendered as symbols of energy and imagination.
Hawam studied graphic arts at Helwan University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and has exhibited widely in Egypt and Lebanon since 2010.
February 7 to March 30; 9am-8pm; Dubai
8. Rays, Ripples, Residue at 421 Arts Campus
This exhibition marks the 10th anniversary of 421 Arts Campus, offering an opportunity to reflect on the practices that have emerged in this time, while also looking towards the future.
The works displayed in Rays, Ripples, Residue are diverse, encompassing video, performance, installations and multimedia. The works promote discussions on “what it means to produce art in the UAE today”, the exhibition literature reads, highlighting perspectives of emerging creatives, collectives and grassroots initiatives, while also nodding to the role of cultural institutions that have promoted these practices.
Rays, Ripples, Residue can be considered as three exhibitions that overlap and inform one another.
Munira Al Sayegh’s Leading to the Middle, for instance, celebrates the contributions of key instigators, from Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim to Lamya Gargash, Khaled Esguerra and Bait15, showing how their works have had a ripple effect on the local arts scene.
Where Al Sayegh unpacks a seminal moment in the earlier moment of the country’s contemporary arts landscape, Nadine Khalil considers what it was like to enter the scene after this trail-blazing moment from the early 2000s to the 2010s. Her Ghosts of Arrival shows, as the exhibition literature reads, “the quieter structures that continue to shape the present”. Artists and collectives featured here include Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Mona Ayyash, Nadine Ghandour, Bait Juma, Hashel Lamki, Sara Naim and Isaac Sullivan.
Finally, Murtaza Vali’s SUN™ takes its cue from the sun, not only as a source of life, but also through the way it governs rhythms of daily routine. Symbolically, it reflects “the growing complexity and maturity of artistic practice and discourse in the UAE”, reads the literature. “The diverse conceptual, material and process-based approaches on display are pitched between the sun’s eternal beauty and increasingly urgent critiques of consumption and climate change, revealing the contradictions embedded in narratives of modernity and progress.”
Artists included in this section are Charbel-Joseph H. Boutros, Khalid Jauffer, Raja'a Khalid, Nima Nabavi and Pratchaya Phinthong.
Until April 26; Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-8pm; Abu Dhabi
9. Image Keepers at Photography Gallery
The inaugural show at Sharjah Art Foundation's new venue in Al Manakh brings together works by 17 artists and collectives. The photographs are all drawn from the foundation’s collection and encompass studio portraits and multimedia installations.
Highlights include The Bride is Beautiful but She is Married to Another Man, a 2017 portrait series by Rula Halawani that depicts Palestinians just before the checks at the border crossing. Sunil Gupta’s Black Experience delves into the everyday lives of South Asian communities in the UK in the 1980s. Susan Hefuna’s Landscape/Cityscape shows Cairo and the Nile Delta through a pinhole camera. Mohammed Kazem’s Window shows the rapid urban development in the UAE, documenting the rise of a new building and the experiences of the workers constructing the structure.
Until April 26; Saturday to Thursday, 9am-9pm; Friday, 4pm-9pm; Sharjah
10. Hard Like Tears, Soft Like Glass at MiZa
Iris Projects is organising the first solo exhibition by Shamsa Al Omaira, a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Abu Dhabi.
Hosted at MiZa at Port Zayed, the exhibition focuses on Al Omaira’s exploration of duality, drawing on images of childhood comfort and security. Familiar references such as bedding and jello desserts are reimagined as soft-looking sculptural works embedded with elements of risk, including ceramic and glass shards.
The show is presented as part of Iris's wider programme and follows a year-long mentorship with curator and art critic Nadine Khalil. The process supported the development of Al Omaira’s practice and encouraged experimentation with new materials and formats, including woodwork, stitching and installation-based works.
Until April 30; Monday to Thursday, 9am-5pm; Friday, 9am-1pm; Abu Dhabi
11. Picasso, The Figure at Louvre Abu Dhabi
Picasso, The Figure offers a focused examination of how Pablo Picasso transformed representations of the human body in modern art.
Drawn largely from the collection of the Musee National Picasso–Paris, the exhibition traces Picasso’s engagement with the figure across seven decades, shaped by formal experimentation, political upheaval and personal experience. It advances a central argument that Picasso remained fundamentally committed to the human figure, even when his work appeared to dismantle representation.
Rather than following a chronological structure, the exhibition is organised around recurring approaches that defined his treatment of the body, including schematisation, hybridisation, petrification and stylisation. These themes chart the evolution of his figures from early Cubist symbols to the monumental bodies of the 1920s, the hybrid forms of Surrealism and the fractured, urgent figures of his later years.
Until May 31; Tuesday to Thursday, 10am-6:30pm; Friday to Sunday, 10am-8:30pm; Abu Dhabi
12. Urdu Worlds at Ishara Art Foundation
Urdu Worlds is the UAE’s first contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language. Curated by Hammad Nasar, the exhibition stages a visual and conceptual dialogue between the late Indian-American printmaker Zarina and Pakistani artist Ali Kazim.
It marks the first comprehensive presentation of Kazim’s work in the Gulf and brings his practice into conversation with Zarina’s long-standing engagement with language, memory and abstraction.
Although shaped by different generations and geographies, both artists draw deeply on Urdu literature and thought. Zarina frequently incorporated Urdu poetry and text into her prints, while Kazim’s paintings are informed by Urdu fiction and verse, shaping his reflections on landscape, history and everyday life.
Until May 31; Monday to Saturday, 10am-7pm; Dubai
13. Of Land and Water at Kalba Ice Factory
Of Land and Water marks the first presentation of works from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection in the emirate's east coast.
The exhibition presents large-scale works by nine international artists and collectives. The works ponder upon how borders sever stretches of open land and sea, dividing inhabitants and impacting their daily lives.
Until May 31; Saturday to Thursday, 9am-9pm; Friday, 4pm-9pm; Sharjah
14. Spectra of the Beautiful Past at Bait Sheikh Saeed bin Hamad Al Qasimi
Taking place in the heritage house in Kalba, Sharjah, the exhibition brings together works by prominent Emirati artists including Abdulrahim Salem and Najat Makki. The work on display is meant to evoke nostalgia and an appreciation for a bygone era.
The exhibition’s venue underscores its themes. Constructed at the turn of the 20th century, it was built by and named after the ruler of Kalba, Saeed bin Hamad Al Qasimi.
Until May 31; Saturday to Thursday, 8am-8pm; Friday, 4pm-8pm; Sharjah
