The reputation of the UAE summer as a time when life comes to a sweltering standstill is a thing of the past – particularly on the arts scene.
Galleries have begun embracing the season, with some new exhibitions rolling out and others being extended well into the hottest months.
From photography as a medium of reckoning to an exhibition that brings streets into a gallery setting and another that champions farmers, there is a lot to see across the UAE.
Here are 10 to get you started.
No Trespassing at Ishara Art Foundation
Curated by Priyanka Mehra, No Trespassing is Ishara Art Foundation’s first summer exhibition.
The show brings street aesthetics into the gallery, with six artists engaging with urban materials as both subject and medium. Works by Fatspatrol (Fathima Mohiuddin), H11235 (Kiran Maharjan), Khaled Esguerra, Rami Farook, Salma Dib and Sara Alahbabi turn building materials, pavements, signage and surfaces into acts of mark-making.
Rather than define what the street is, the exhibition reflects how it’s used, as a space that’s chaotic, curated, lived-in and constantly rewritten.
Monday to Saturday, 10am-7pm; until August 30, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
Cartographies, Revised at Manarat Al Saadiyat
This exhibition is the culmination of a four-month residency at The Photography Studio at Manarat Al Saadiyat. Seven emerging artists from across the world take a cartographer’s approach to image-making, using it to chart personal histories and narratives.
Aman Ali’s photographs, for instance, trace maternal love through worn hands. Reem Hamid projects shifting rhythms of stillness and movement via sand and performance. Fares Al Kaabi mourns demolished homes and a bygone time through windows and doorways.
Monday to Sunday, 10am-8pm; until September 1; Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi
Upside Down, by Morteza Khazaie at Leila Heller Gallery
In Upside Down, Morteza Khazaie uses wood to make tall, curved forms inspired by trees bending to wind and storms. The sculptures show how trees endure without breaking by adapting to the elements. The works evoke a powerful metaphor for individual and societal change, transforming under pressure but nonetheless enduring.
The use of wood in this context is also interesting. The material carries a sense of growth and history, while underscoring the resilience found in nature. It embodies the juxtaposition between pliability and strength.
As curator Farshad Mahoutforoush said: “Through these works, I wanted to explore how softness can be strength, and how being ‘upside down’ might simply mean seeing things differently.”
Monday to Friday, 10am-7pm; Saturday, 11am- 7pm; until September 15, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
Architectures of the In-Between at Aisha Alabbar Gallery
The three artists featured in this exhibition all identify architecture as a bedrock to their practice. Yet, they have gone on to reinterpret the discipline in new and diverse ways.
Atefeh Majidi Nezhad hangs lace like memory in her Zero-G series. Nevine Hamza gives form to nebulous metaphysical ideas through photography, digital art, collage and painting. Finally, Layla Juma renders social structures into minimalist geometries, revealing coded systems through drawing, installation and sculpture.
Monday to Saturday, 10am-6pm; until August 23; Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Dubai
Between Sunrise and Sunset, by Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim at Maraya Art Centre
A seminal work by important Emirati artist Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Between Sunrise and Sunset was commissioned by the National Pavilion UAE and featured at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
The work is now on display at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah. The exhibition, which is in its final month, has been organised with the support of Lawrie Shabibi and the National Pavilion UAE. The exhibition features three paintings by Ibrahim, but the titular installation is the centrepiece, taking the entirety of the second-floor gallery space.
The installation features 128 sculptural forms, each unique in shape, size and colour. The sculptures are arranged in a gradient, ranging from more vivid hues to the dulled and monochrome palettes that allude to nighttime. For Ibrahim, the work is meant to reflect the diversity of the UAE, both environmentally and culturally, while also evoking the metaphorical breadth of night and day.
Saturday to Thursday, 10am-7pm; Friday, 4pm-7pm; until August 1; Al Qasba, Sharjah
New acquisitions and a VR experience at Louvre Abu Dhabi
While Louvre Abu Dhabi is not holding a special exhibition this summer, there are plenty of new attractions to make it a worthwhile visit – no matter how many times you’ve gone before.
The museum has introduced a new rotation of loans and acquisitions across its permanent galleries. The additions range from Roman portraiture and South Asian courtly art to modernist works.
Highlights include a finely carved Roman cameo thought to depict Agrippa Postumus, mounted in an 18th-century British setting; a luminous ivory-and-gold casket from 16th-century Sri Lanka; Juan Luna’s enigmatic Una Bulaquena (1895), on loan from the National Museum of the Philippines; and Kandinsky’s White Oval (1921), which marks a moment of transition for the legendary artist.
Louvre Abu Dhabi has also launched a virtual reality experience. The Quantum Dome Project is a VR installation that unfolds over 25 minutes. It immerses participants in digitally reconstructed environments from three disparate and historic corners of the globe: ancient Rome, medieval Baghdad and Mughal-era India.
Tuesday to Thursday, 10am-6.30pm; Friday to Sunday, 10am-8.30pm; Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi
Everyman's Mountain, by Omar Al Gurg at Lawrie Shabibi
Emirati photographer and designer Omar Al Gurg is presenting his first solo show with Everyman’s Mountain. The exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi features 24 archival prints from a six-day trek up Kilimanjaro in 2021. From misty forests and regenerating moorlands to the fragile icy summit, Al Gurg’s work shows the mountain as a shifting ecosystem, shaped by nature and human activity.
The exhibition is as much a personal odyssey as it is a broader environmental mediation, a tribute to nature’s quiet transformations and our collective duty to preserve them.
Monday to Saturday, 10am-6pm; until September 12; Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer, by Asuncion Molinos Gordo at Jameel Arts Centre
Spanish artist-researcher Asuncion Molinos Gordo’s first major retrospective in West Asia surveys 15 years of her work on rural knowledge, land use and food systems.
Gordo's work draws on anthropology and cultural studies. It reframes farmers as not only food producers, but also intellectuals and engineers. Their vernacular practices, she points out, may hold keys to sustainability.
Works that are being featured in the exhibition include her famous World Agriculture Museum, which was first staged in Cairo in 2010 and won the Sharjah Biennial Prize in 2015. Another highlight is Como Soliamos, a 2020 rammed-earth installation echoing Andalusian and falaj irrigation techniques.
Saturday to Monday, Wednesday to Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday; noon-8pm; until September 28; Jaddaf Waterfront, Dubai
Unstable Grounds at 421 Arts Campus
Unstable Grounds, the MFA graduate exhibition from NYU Abu Dhabi at 421, is a layered constellation of practices that reveal not just what is shown, but also what resists visibility.
The exhibition features the works of eight artists, exploring themes of environment, displacement, memory and human connection, through installation, performance, video, sculpture and print.
Highlights include Consequences of Circumstance by Hala El Abora, where images of birds, neither definitely dead nor alive, are carved on slabs of stone, disrupting the historical trope of the bird as a symbol of beauty and freedom.
In The Sea is a Body which Moves, Adele Bea Cipste explores her evolving relationship to Abu Dhabi’s shoreline across several works. In Gridlines, Jude Maharmeh presents hand-cut and incised clay-tiles that draw from the capital’s urban aspect.
Other installations question the limitations of materials, form and meaning. Danute Vaitekunaite, Mowen Li and Bao all examine their personal histories while experimenting with materials.
Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-8pm; until September 7; Zayed Port, Abu Dhabi
Time Heals, Just Not Quick Enough… at Efie Gallery
Time Heals, Just Not Quick Enough… is a group exhibition curated by Ose Ekore. It features works by five contemporary artists: Samuel Fosso, Aida Muluneh, Kelani Abass, Abeer Sultan and Sumayah Fallatah.
The artists come from different generations and use film and photography to reflect upon themes of growth and healing, while also showing how the mediums are barometers of change.
Fallatah, for instance, reflects on experiences of the African diaspora in the Arab world by examining personal and family narratives. Sultan uses imagery of marine life to re-examine her family’s migration from West Africa to Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. Abass, inspired by his father's letterpress printing company, layers images, texts and found objects to explore the passage of time.
Fosso’s self-portraits challenge identity and representation by embodying stylised personas. These are inspired by African-American fashion and West African pop culture, and draw on the magazine images that were brought to the Central African Republic by Peace Corps volunteers.
Finally, Muluneh’s surreal photographs show face paint, masks and Ethiopian motifs to subvert stereotypical representations of African women.
Monday to Saturday, 11am-7pm; until July 30; Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
