Hi friends & happy Monday! To celebrate the new week, we gathered four exhibitions from the region you should not miss this week.

A Falcon’s Eye: Tribute to Sheikh Saoud Al Thani, MIA, Doha.

The Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in the Qatari capital presents an exhibition dedicated to Sheikh Saoud bin Mohamed bin Ali Al Thani, an exceptional collector, who was instrumental in creating collections for Qatar Museums. The exhibition explores Sheikh Saoud’s collections, his interest towards the cabinets of curiosities, a habit originating from Renaissance Europe, and his collecting practices and vision. Generally exhibitions examining a collector tend to be quite intimate and have the ability to reveal intimate details about their subject’s worldview. It goes without saying that collecting is always a special activity that holds a particular place in the collector’s heart.

Expect plenty of wonders: objects d’art, antiquities, jewellery, photography and modern and contemporary artworks recalling Sheikh Saoud’s ‘cabinet of curiosity’.

The exhibition closes 10 April 2021.

Tensegrity: Ruba Salameh, Zawyeh Gallery, Dubai

The Zawyeh Gallery presents a Ruba Salameh show. In the artwork series Tensegrity, Salameh breaks free from the authority of the art form. The exhibition showcases Salameh’s concrete structures of abstract arrangements composed of geometrical shapes using cold pastel colours. Yet, the artist finds ways to disrupt this monotonous harmy in an unexpected way.

Expect tranquility and serenity, yet be ready to get challenged.

The exhibition closes 31 December 2020.

After You: Maryam Hoseini, Green Art Gallery, Dubai

In her first solo exhibition at the gallery, New York-based Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini presents paintings on geometrically shaped, vertically oriented panels that draw the viewer into abstract containers. Within these spaces, Hoseini’s equally abstracted figures – cast between the human and the animal – contest their confinement, displacement, and subjugation.

Take your time and explore the exhibited paintings with time. Expect complicated questions around materiality and combination of forms, but enjoy the calm gallery environment.

The exhibition closes 7 January 2021.

Welcome Home Vol. II, MACAAL, Marrakech

Welcome Home Vol. II explores the Museum’s permanent collection. The second edition brings together some of the most iconic works from MACAAL’s collection, as well as a selection of the Museum’s most recent acquisitions purchased in 2020. The exhibition includes artists such as Soufiane Ababri, Gideon Appah, Nidhal Chamekh, Mohamed Melehi, Djamel Tatah, Marie Wolfs and Fayssal Zaoui.

Expect a wonderful mixture of old favourites and fresh, new acquisitions. Plenty of colour, wonder and oh-how-I-missed-you kind of vibes. After all, the museum was closed for seven long months.

The exhibition closes 10 January 2021.

Happy exhibition visits!