With Art Dubai and a number of exciting new exhibitions, Dubai is now the place to be. Don’t miss these four exhibitions in the city this week.

Alymamah Rashed Solo Exhibition, Tabari Artspace, Dubai

The Tabari Artspace presents a solo exhibition on one of our favourite artists, the Kuwaiti Alymamah Rashed. Rashed’s gestural, surrealist paintings harness self-portraiture to investigate the complexities of identity in the post-internet generation. Rashed understands herself as a multifaceted being, the various elements  that comprise her persona flow out into the different realms that she emits onto her canvas: the earth-bound (the mind and the fleshed body), the spiritual (the thobe), and a combination of the two which come to form a third space. Spirituality, specifically the notion of spiritual intelligence, has been a central tenet of Rashed’s existence, yet she understands spirituality as universal; the act of prayer is engaged with across faiths and cultures. Observing the body as a capsule of movement, through the process of prayer Rashed can transcend as she witnesses her physical and spiritual worlds conflate.

The exhibition closes on 31 May 2021. 

Dia al-Azzawi: The Lebanon Works, Meem Gallery, Dubai

Meem Gallery presents us a fantastic treat: a solo exhibition on the celebrated Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi, one of the pioneers of modern and contemporary Arab art. Painted in al-Azzawi’s recently established studio in Lebanon, set back from the water in a shady grove just next to Nabu Museum, which was opened in October 2018, these recent paintings exude a fresh vibrancy that may have sprung from the change of scenery— especially the change between London and the tranquil and picturesque northern Lebanese coastal town of Chekka, close to the city of Batroun.

The exhibition closes on 26 June 2021. 

When Words Disappear into Trees, Green Art Gallery, Dubai

Green Art Gallery presents the work of New Delhi-based artist, Seher Shah. Working in the field of art and architecture has prompted Shah to explore space, landscape, objects, and aesthetics through her drawings, sculptures, and prints. In her practice, she is preoccupied with the relationship between perspective and materiality of architecture. The present exhibition embodies the artist’s studies into absence, silence, and emptiness. Through her works on paper, Shah traces time and place that are real and imagined by measuring the violence between absence and deletion through architecture, language and history. 

The exhibition closes on 5 June 2021. 

Thaier Helal: Abyss, Ayyam Gallery, Dubai 

Ayyam Gallery presents Thaier Helal’s solo exhibition, featuring his most recent body of work. By asking radical questions, the work of Thaier examines our existence, meaning, and current state of bitterness that drains the mind and soul. Moving away from his sculptural and voluminous approach, Helal expresses himself through flatness threading a thin line between figurative and abstract in darkness. In his quest for an answer, meaning and truth emerge in light and color across the canvases. Yet, the light remains untouched, resulting in an opportunity for color.

The exhibition closes on 10 May 2021.

Featured image: Alymamah Rashed, I HAVE BEEN THERE MANY TIMES BEFORE ( I BURN OUTSIDE OF MY WOMB), 2020, Watercolor on paper, 127 x 276.9 cm.