Alia Zaal paints fragments of Al Khawaneej’s trees from memory. Ahmad AlAttar hides an algorithm inside a gallery for visitors to hunt by ear. Emirati students at Zayed University have spent months documenting their own country through a lens they control. This summer, art across the UAE is less a season of spectacle than a sustained conversation about who makes images, what bodies carry, and how time actually moves.
The breadth of work on view spans photography and works on paper to sculpture, design, craft and painting. Several exhibitions foreground emerging voices. At Bassam Freiha Art Foundation, those voices belong to Emirati students from Zayed University, whose exhibition Seeing Ourselves runs until August 31. The student-led project positions young artists as image-makers documenting their experiences through architectural, portrait and landscape photography, shifting authorship toward contemporary Emirati perspectives. Students from photography, graphic design and visual arts programmes worked across all stages of exhibition-making, including installation, branding, design and curatorial development.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/art-design/2026/08/23/uae-guide-museum-gallery-exhibitions-to-see-abu-dhabi-dubai/.
Manarat Al Saadiyat’s Spectrum: Becoming Visible, Becoming Image showcases work from the fourth cohort of the institution’s Photographer-in-Residence Programme. Ten UAE-based photographers and visual artists developed their work over a four-month residency under the mentorship of photography expert Jassem Rabee Al Awadi. Running until September 1, the exhibition approaches photography as more than a documentary medium. Through photography, video, sculpture, textiles and mixed-media installation, participating artists explore recurring motifs including stars, pearls, ghaf trees, the human body and everyday life, treating them as evolving symbols rather than fixed subjects. The work features Emirati, regional and international artists based in the UAE, reflecting Abu Dhabi’s growing role as a centre for cross-cultural artistic exchange.
At Carbon 12 in Dubai, The Two Walks: Works on Paper Selected by Judy Karkour brings together new and archival works on paper by 14 artists until September 5. Selected by artist Judy Karkour, the exhibition considers paper not as a preparatory material but as a complete and expressive medium in its own right. The works range from drawing and collage to mixed media, using paper to explore memory, abstraction, environmental fragility, urban development and inner emotional states. Participating artists include Sarah Almehairi, Amir Khojasteh, Bernhard Buhmann, Faris Alshafar, Nour Malas, Solimar Miller, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Andre Butzer, Monika Grabuschnigg, Mayar Obedo, Nadine Ghandour, Edgar Orlaineta, Olaf Breuning and Philip Mueller.
Technology and human interaction form the conceptual centre of Human in the Loop at 421 Arts Campus in Abu Dhabi, running until September 13. This first institutional solo exhibition by artist and engineer Ahmad AlAttar transforms a concept from robotics and artificial intelligence into an interactive game of sound, touch and discovery. Visitors search for an unseen algorithm hidden within the gallery space by pulling hanging ropes and listening to subtle changes in an evolving soundscape. Glitches, distortions and bursts of sound act as clues, guiding visitors toward the algorithm before it relocates and the process begins again. The work questions whether people are directing technology or whether technology is quietly shaping human behaviour.
Meanwhile, at Dom Art Projects in Dubai, Time That Grows Slowly, curated by Alexander Burenkov and running until September 13, brings together 12 artists in an exhibition that considers time through the rhythms of plant life. The exhibition proposes growth, decay and regeneration as alternatives to conventional ideas of linear progress. Site-specific installations explore ideas of care and communication between species while engaging with ecological, feminist, philosophical and postcolonial concerns. Participating artists include Maha Alasaker, Srijon Chowdhury, Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Patricia Dominguez, Kwama Frigaux, Mevlana Lipp, Sulafa Mohammed, Tabita Rezaire, Shaima Shamsi, Farah Soltani, Antoine Renard and Nadia Waheed, with several exhibiting in Dubai for the first time.
In Plain Sight at Gallery Isabelle in Dubai, running until September 15, offers Alia Zaal’s intimate exploration of the UAE landscape through paintings, works on paper and ceramic pieces that focus on fragments rather than sweeping vistas. Drawing inspiration from locations including Al Khawaneej in Dubai and the mangroves and mudflats of Abu Dhabi, Zaal turns her attention to details of familiar trees and plants, creating works shaped as much by memory as by observation. Many of the paintings begin as smartphone photographs before being digitally altered through cropping, zooming and distortion. The exhibition is informed by the ideas of the 11th-century scholar Ibn Al Haytham, whose pioneering work on optics argued that sight is an active process influenced by memory and interpretation.
In Abstracto, In Concreto: On Memory and Presence at Efie Gallery in Dubai, running until September 17, brings together four artists of African descent whose works move between figuration and abstraction to explore identity, memory and diasporic experience. Curated by Brice Arsene Yonkeu, the exhibition features Luke Agada, Ludovic Nkoth, Naila Opiangah and Tunji Adeniyi-Jones. Across painting and charcoal drawing, the artists use the human body as a site where personal histories, cultural inheritance and imagination intersect. Agada’s fluid compositions draw on the idea of the “third space”, presenting identity as something hybrid and unstable. Nkoth uses ambiguous settings and obscured expressions to create scenes shaped by the viewer’s own experiences, while Opiangah reduces figures to faceless silhouettes that assemble into architectural forms. Adeniyi-Jones draws from Yoruba mythology and culture, using vivid palettes and figures that gradually emerge from fields of colour and pattern.
Tangerine Dreams at Ayyam Gallery in Dubai, running until September 18, brings together artists from different generations around the simple subject of the colour orange. The group exhibition explores how a single hue can evoke contrasting associations, moving between warmth and intensity, celebration and nostalgia. Works by artists including Sama Alshaibi, Abdalla Al Omari, Tammam Azzam, Thaier Helal, Leila Nseir, Faisal Samra, Khaled Takreti and Kais Salman use orange as a starting point to explore memory, landscape, identity and transformation. The exhibition is accompanied by Irish poet Roisin Kelly’s Oranges, which uses the act of selecting fruit as a metaphor for intimacy and desire.
Body Quotidian at Sharjah Art Foundation, running until September 20, brings together recent works by Laila Majid and Inaam Zafar in an exhibition exploring the human body through metaphor, material and everyday experience. Curated by Raja’a Khalid, assistant curator at Sharjah Art Foundation, the exhibition places Majid and Zafar’s sculptures, photographs and paintings in dialogue with one another. Both artists approach the body indirectly, through surfaces, silhouettes, domestic spaces and the materials that suggest flesh, heat, touch and presence. The exhibition considers how bodies are perceived, altered and contained, particularly as technology continues to reshape ideas of youth, beauty and truth.
Vantage Point 13, also at Sharjah Art Foundation and running until November 29, marks a new chapter for the institution’s long-running photography platform as it moves into a dedicated photography gallery. Selected through an international open call, six artists present newly commissioned photographic series developed with the foundation’s curatorial and production support. The exhibition features work by Adam Rouhana, Guanyu Xu, Latifa AlBokhari, Luisa Dorr, Maheder Haileselassie and Sathish Kumar. Introduced in 2013, Vantage Point has become one of the UAE’s key photography initiatives, and this edition reflects the foundation’s expanded commitment to supporting new work, with participating artists receiving production funding to create original projects specifically for the exhibition.
Precarious Beings at Tashkeel in Dubai, running from September 1 to October 11, presents Hamad Al Muzaini’s first solo exhibition. The Kuwaiti artist, trained as an architect, has gradually shifted his focus from designing places to questioning how and why they take shape. His practice considers the built environment through seemingly mundane details, asking what improvised interventions and habits can reveal about the people navigating urban spaces. Working across photography, drawing and sculpture, Al Muzaini explores how negotiating, circumventing and inhabiting a city can become so routine that these behaviours eventually escape notice.
A Board Game Adventure at Louvre Abu Dhabi, running until April 25, 2027, transforms the museum into a giant playground, using some of the world’s oldest games to explore how people have connected across cultures for thousands of years. Designed for children but engaging for all ages, the exhibition traces the journey of games including chess, Mancala, Ludo and Carrom as they travelled between ancient civilisations and evolved into the games still played today. The exhibition combines immersive installations with rare artefacts borrowed from international museums, including some of the earliest known board game objects from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and India.