The exhibition scene in Dubai is looking pretty dashing this autumn. There are plenty of shows to check out presenting a variety of approaches and a plethora of focuses – surely something for everyone’s taste.

Map ≠ Territory, Green Art Gallery

The Green Art Gallery presents a group show of Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck, Rossella Biscotti, Bady Dalloul, Cian Dayrit, Shadi Habib Allah and Christine Rebet, subtly complicating linguist Alfred Korybski’s incisive phrase with a mathematical sign. These six artists are united in this show to discuss the question of mapping in a 21st century setting – during a time of on-going post-colonial fallout, elusive resources, invasive tech and intensifying surveillance. Rather than literally mapping, these artists reflect on the various strands of inquiry the fraught map/territory relation continues to encompass. 

The exhibition closes on 30 October.

Signal Noise, 1×1 Art Gallery

The exhibition closes on 30 October 2021.

Iwan Maktabi Private Collection

Iwan Maktabi exhibits for the first time in Dubai and presents a number of antique carpets from their treasured private collection of carpets and textiles. Among the displayed pieces is a collection of silk Kashan Varjesteh from the workshop of the renowned masterweaver Mohtashem dating back to the 19th century.

Arnaud Rivieren: Natural Sublime, Custot Gallery

Custot Gallery presents a solo show on the Dubai-based Belgian sculptor Arnaud Rivieren who is a contemporary sculptor specialized in repurposing discarded industrial materials which are scavenged around the dense industrial areas and scrapyards of the UAE. The exhibition Natural Sublime displays three new bodies of work deepening the artist’s engagement with representing our natural world through painstakingly precise industrial techniques.

The exhibition closes on 4 December 2021.

Undefined Territory, Gulf Photo Plus

Presented by the Bangladesh Art Week, as part of the first edition of the Bangladesh Art Week Dubai, the exhibition Undefined Territory addresses constructions of place, identity, time and knowledge within contemporary Bangladesh. Featuring photography, audiovisual works and archival materials, the exhibition showcases works of Shumon Ahmed, Palash Bhattacharjee, Marzia Farhana, Shahria Sharmin and Munem Wasif who engage with the notions of ‘territory’, whether taken to mean the politics of a defined geography, structures of languages as propagated by colonially or a passage of time as palpable to a degree of rigidity and stagnation.

The exhibition closes on 7 November.

Sublime Convergence, Volte Art Projects

To inaugurate their new permanent space in Dubai, the Volte Art Projects presents an exhibition titled Sublime Convergence examining nature, time and technology through a compelling visual dialogue between ancient memory and near futures. The exhibited artists Sheba Chhachhi, Wim Delvoye, Ranbir Kaleka, William Kentridge, Mario Klingemann, Based Upon, Humans since 1982 and Random International present works conversing with architecture and the transformative power of immersive art. Visitors are invited to enjoy large-scale installations with computer-generated visions that create both real and virtual experiences of the past, present and future, grappling with the nature of time and its metamorphosis.

The exhibition closes on 31 January 2022.

Muhanned Cader: Nightscapes 2019-2021, Grey Noise

Grey Noise exhibits the work of Galle-based Sri Lankan artist Muhanned Cader. The show examines darkness, a familiar theme in Cader’s oeuvre. The body of 12 paintings titled Nightscapes 2019-2021 explores the topic further, but instead of looking at the night in these works, Cader looks into it.

The exhibition closes on 1 November 2021.

Thanks a Million, Carbon.12

Carbon.12presents a solo exhibition on the Nigerian-American artist Anthony Akinbola whose work is fundamentally built upon the philosophy of the readymade and investigation into his relationships with these same objects. Akinbola’s series of textile paintings focuses on the culturally and historically charged Du-rag; a garment used in the maintenance of African hair, as a primary means to explore and navigate a dialogue that is concerned with the intricacies and complexities of semiotics within American culture. Upon parsing the readymade object, Akinbola examines the intimate narrative of our individual and collective cultural associations to these objects, amplifying their seminal and perpetual role in the fragile construction of who we are.

Ana D’ Castro: Enchanged Garden, Leila Heller Gallery

Leila Heller Gallery exhibits the work of Portuguese visual artist and architect Ana D’ Castro. The exhibition Enchanted Garden presents a series of paintings made by an assemblage of materials added onto the canvas, creating heavy texture of layers.

The exhibition closes on 15 November 2021.

Mia Fonssagrives Solow: Sculpture Retrospective, Leila Heller Gallery

Leila Heller Gallery’s second autumn show presents the work of the American contemporary artist Mia Fonssagrives Solo who is renowned for her refined and whimsical aesthetic in both figurative and abstract forms in a range of media. This retrospective exhibitions presents a number of her uplifting abstract sculptures that examine the world through a simplicity of form and colour, exploring scale and movement as the curving surfaces of each piece draw the eye from one exquisite line to the next.

The exhibition closes on 15 November 2021.

To celebrate their inauguration, Firetti Contemporary presents a group show Praxis of Change focusing on the environment. The show invites visitors to view art through ecological glasses – how the environment is represented within images and sculptures as well as how the role of humans on Earth is depicted. Displaying both works by regional artists as well as artists exhibiting in the region for the first time, the gallery aims to present a manifesto stating that saving the planet is a collective effort that also demands individual responsibility – arguably a relatively safe message to deliver politically. The artists taking part in this exhibition include Charbel Samuel Aoun (Lebanon), Catherine Latson (USA), Laura Lappi (Finland), Rachel Libeskind (USA), Irvin Pascal (UK), Ghizlane Sahli (Morocco), Arjan Shehaj (Albania), Collin Sekajugo (Uganda), Eltjon Valle (Albania) and Fatiha Zemmouri (Morocco).

The exhibition closes on 24 November 2021.

The Eternal Return of the Same. Manal AlDowayan, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde

The Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde displays the work of Manal AlDowayan this autumn. The Saudi artist’s first solo show at the gallery deepens AlDowayan’s nuanced interrogation of women’s shifting status within a metamorphosing Saudi society and intensify her exploration of new material. A nod to Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, the title The Eternal Return of the Same captures gestures of repetition and iteration undergirding the works. While the exhibition may provide a moment of reflection on the need for reckoning, it also bears AlDowayan’s hallmark critical assessment of a world rife with inequity and uncertainty.

The exhibition closes on 23 December 2021.

Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik: Nota Bene, Ayyam Gallery

This autumn, Ayyam Gallery presents Nota Bene, a solo exhibition featuring works by Syrian artist Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik. Building from Imad Mustafa’s notion that ‘the walls alone know our secrets’, Al-Beik explores the meaning of walls as people’s palimpsests and the daubed drops of paint telling us society’s stories through plaster and paint. In this series, the artist wonders about the unfolding of the walls. Will they capture and absorb the violence and atrocities their owners witnessed? What layers will be added to portray and recreate the pain? Al-Beik shakes the need for authenticity to reality, now using these walls as a medium of expression.

The exhibition closes on 5 November 2021.

Cardinal Points. Mehdi Moutashar, Lawrie Shabibi

Lawrie Shabibipresents the gallery’s first solo show on the French-Iraqi artist Mehdi Moutashar. The exhibition displays a curation of contemporary artworks and a large-scale installation that are quintessential to his practice, celebrating Mourashar as a meeting point between Islamic tradition and experimental optical art.

The exhibition closes on 24 November 2021.

Featured image: Courtesy of Green Art Gallery.