The art season continues across the UAE with galleries and institutions across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah presenting a range of exhibitions.
Current highlights include Interoception at Iris Projects by Juma Al Haj; the final week of All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group at NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery; and Urdu Worlds at Ishara Art Foundation, staged as a visual and conceptual dialogue between the late Indian-American printmaker Zarina and the Pakistani artist Ali Kazim.
Major institutional shows and gallery exhibitions continue to take stock of artistic practice in the region through photography, landscape-led works, reflective group exhibitions and landmark solo presentations.
Here are six exhibitions to see now in the UAE before the summer slowdown.
1. Jorge Tacla: Time the destroyer is time the preserver at Sharjah Art Foundation
This major solo exhibition by Chilean artist Jorge Tacla brings together works spanning more than four decades of a practice shaped by political upheaval and questions of representation.
Tacla has worked between Santiago and New York since the early 1980s and draws on personal and historical memory, informed in part by the legacy of Chile’s 1973 coup, to examine how violence and human rights are understood and recorded.
Structured across eight chapters, the exhibition presents large-scale paintings and works on paper that reflect on the shifting nature of witnessing.
Tacla’s compositions often depict architecture and landscapes in the negative, with forms defined through absence rather than presence, foregrounding the role of perception and memory in constructing meaning.
The title, drawn from a line by TS Eliot, frames a broader inquiry into destruction and preservation, as the works consider the afterlife of traumatic events and the hierarchies that shape how suffering is remembered.
Until June 7; Sharjah
2. All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group at NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery
Curated by Nada Shabout, the exhibition explores the Baghdad Modern Art Group, founded in 1951 by Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan Al Said, and its artistic significance in mid-20th century Iraq.
Working in the aftermath of independence, these artists sought a new visual language that balanced global modernism with Iraq’s deep cultural and historical roots. The exhibition brings together key figures in this important chapter of Arab modern art and the later generations they influenced.
Until June 7; Abu Dhabi
3. 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 the Pakistani artist Ali Kazim.
The exhibition 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 incorporates 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 June 8; Dubai
4. The UAE is Beautiful at Cultural Foundation
The UAE is Beautiful brings together the works of locally based photographers in a wide-ranging exhibition exploring the country’s landscapes, people and sense of identity.
Inspired by a quote from President Sheikh Mohamed that describes the country as “beautiful” and “a role model”, the exhibition is led by artist Khalid Al Hammadi and presents a collective portrait of the nation through themes of resilience, belonging and human connection.
Participating artists include Hamid Badr Musharbek, Ola Ibrahim Allouz, Reem Ali Abdullah, Abdulla Ibrahim Alhattawi, Yousuf Ahmed Al Qasimi, Salem Sarhan Al Sawafi, Rami Escandar Abboud, Shoaib Ahmed, Alia Sultan Al Joker, Mohammed Khaled Almessabi, Aisha Alhammadi and Noora Alhammadi.
Together, the photographs move between heritage and modernity, capturing personal and shared experiences across the Emirates.
Alongside the exhibition, visitors are invited to contribute their own photographs through a community initiative developed with Emirates Post. A dedicated postbox installed at the venue allows residents and visitors to submit images reflecting their own connection to the UAE, expanding the exhibition into a broader public archive of memory and place.
Until July 14; Abu Dhabi
5. Under the Same Sky at Rizq Art Initiative
Under the Same Sky brings together 20 artists in the UAE in an exhibition reflecting on the experience of living, observing and creating within the country. The show considers how artists from different cultural backgrounds respond to the UAE through memory, material, landscape and everyday life.
The exhibition features both Emirati artists and long-term residents whose practices have been shaped by their time in the country. Works range from Maitha Al Omaira’s cyanotypes of the ghaf tree and Shamsa Al Mansoori’s mixed-media reflections on contemporary Emirati identity, to Tala Atrouni’s explorations of Palestinian tatreez and Simrin Mehra-Agarwal’s research-driven works examining ecology in the UAE.
Rather than presenting a singular narrative, the exhibition approaches the UAE as a layered and evolving space shaped by movement, coexistence and personal histories. Many of the participating artists draw from architecture, textiles, poetry and urban transformation, creating works that reflect both rootedness and constant change.
Conceptualised by chief curator Meena Vari, the exhibition positions the UAE’s cultural landscape as one defined by convergence and exchange.
Participating artists include Adrian Scicluna, Ahmad Al Areef, Anne Marie Lacroix, Dina Nazmi Khorchid, Elham Shafaei, Farah Soltani, Hala El Abora, Karine Roche, Mouza Almheiri, Nikolay Koshelev, Nour Hage, Rabila Kidwai, Sara Al Sulaimani, Shamma Al Mazrouie, Sophiya Khwaja, Zahra Shafie and others.
Until July 31; Abu Dhabi
6. Interoception at Iris Projects
Juma Al Haj’s latest solo exhibition explores how moments of crisis are absorbed, processed and translated into artistic expression. Curated by Shamma Al Mheiri, Interoception takes its title from the body's ability to sense its internal state, and examines the emotional and psychological impact of living through uncertainty.
Developed in response to the missile attacks reported in the UAE in early 2026, the exhibition traces Al Haj’s return to painting as a means of processing fear, anxiety and disruption. Through layered surfaces, fragmented text and gestural mark-making, the artist transforms personal experiences into abstract works that reflect broader feelings of collective unease and resilience.
The exhibition marks a new chapter in Al Haj’s practice, which frequently draws on journaling, writing and sensory experiences as tools for self-reflection. Several works were created in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and evolved into a larger body of work that functions as a visual record of a period of uncertainty.
While rooted in a specific moment, the exhibition expands beyond its immediate context to consider wider questions of memory, embodiment and the ways individuals internalise crisis. The result is a deeply personal yet broadly resonant exploration of how emotional experiences can be translated into visual language.
Until August 6; Abu Dhabi
