Do not miss these four exhibitions in the region and beyond this week. 

Seen & Unseen, B7L9, Tunis

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation’s B7L9 art space presents a group show on the works of Amina Saoudi Aït Khay, Hajra Waheed, Hanaa Malallah, Stéphanie Saadé, and Shilpa Gupta. These five artists explore a multiplicity of trajectories through diverse media and approaches, including textile, video, installation, mixed media, and repurposed everyday objects. 

The exhibition closes on 7 March 2021.

Image courtesy of Firas Ben Khelifa. 

In Pursuit of Utopia: Nabil Anani, Alserkal Avenue & Zawyeh, Dubai

Alserkal Avenue presents a solo exhibition on the Palestinian artist Nabil Anani, organised by Ramallah-based Zawyeh Visual Art Gallery founded in 2013. Since February 2020, the gallery has expanded by opening a second location at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai. 

In this exhibition, Anani chases a utopia that resides in the imagination of all Palestinians whether dispossessed from their lands forcefully, confined in small restricted areas or prevented to access different parts of their homeland. Whether he attempts to capture a moment in the future or protest at the brutal Israeli destruction of the land and the livelihood of its people, Anani offers a vision of a better future; a dream of an ideal Palestine worthy of pursuing.

The exhibition closes on 29 April 2021.

Age of You: a kaleidoscopic exploration of the extreme self, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai  

Presented as a collaboration between Jameel Arts Centre and MOCA Toronto, the Age of You exhibition mainly questions “What if the future is dictated by the unintended consequences of who you are?”. Curated by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the group exhibition features over 70 visual contributors from different disciplines, such as visual arts, design, filmmaking, photography, technology and electronic music. 

Based around the curators’ latest book titled The Extreme Self, their curatorial premise is based on ‘You’ as the most valuable resource existing independently beyond your five senses, everywhere and nowhere. The exhibition is assembled across two of Jameel Arts Centre’s gallery floors, Age of You deals with the Extreme Self within the spectrum of crowds, screens, emoji-as-surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, and transformed perceptions of the face and body in 13 immersive chapters charting the remaking of your interior world as the external world.    

The exhibition closes on 14 August 2021. 

Image courtesy of Jameel Arts Centre. 

Salman Toor: How Will I Know, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Whitney Museum of American Art presents the first-ever museum solo show of Pakistani-origin, New York-based artist Salman Toor (b. 1983), featuring a recent body of work of his figurative oil paintings. Evocative, queer, green, tender, intimate, and imaginary his paintings combine styles of 17th century Romantics to pioneer his style of queer bohemian paintings. His work reveals the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men living between the West and East. Depicting scenes of cozy gatherings and intimate encounters, Toor uses a green palette that provokes a comedic mood turning into a sinister feel. His oeuvre is motivated by issues of identity, personal experiences, and imagined realities.  

The exhibition closes on 4 April 2021.

Featured image: Courtesy of Jameel Arts Centre.