One of the key art hubs in Dubai (and arguably the whole UAE) is Alserkal Avenue, and with the new art season kicking off, there is quite a lot in store for us. Do you know how much it has prepared? Go on, guess — I am willing to bet you won't come close.

Five exhibitions? Ten? Maybe 15? Whatever number you throw out, the real one is still bigger. Try 16 art galleries, each bringing something special to the table this season.

I know planning your way through all of that is a lot, so I have done the pre-work for you. What is each one offering? What is the one unique thing you shouldn't miss? And what are the timings — so you know what to catch now and what can happily wait a few weeks?

Here we go: part one of this season's must-see exhibitions, ready for you.

Exhibition: What We Carry Becomes the Terrain
Dates: September 23 — November 7

What We Carry Becomes the Terrain is the solo exhibition of Bénédicte Gimonnet, a French artist with Peruvian roots who has lived and worked in the UAE since 2009. The show brings together paintings, drawings and textile works that trace the many layers of a life lived between places.

The starting point was Bénédicte's trip back to Peru — a place that, as the works reveal, holds a huge part of her identity. The Amazonian landscape she paints is woven through with fragments of childhood memory, while the vivid colours nod to Peruvian folklore, and Quechua weaving in particular. But it isn't simply about bringing Peruvian references into her work. Returning to Peru prompted a much bigger question: what does it actually mean to have “roots”? If you leave a place, does it stay part of you? And if you live between cultures, where does home really sit?

Perhaps the clearest answer comes through the textile works themselves. Bénédicte takes textiles sourced from Peru, France and the UAE and stitches them together by hand. The result is almost a physical model of her identity: different places joined into a single object, yet each retaining its own history and texture.

Hence the title, What We Carry Becomes the Terrain: home isn't necessarily one place, but everything we carry with us from the places we've belonged to.

Exhibition: Allusive Veil
Dates: September 23 — October 30

Allusive Veil is the solo exhibition of Hisham Sharif, a young Bahraini painter whose work draws, among other influences, on 19th-century French painting.

The exhibition looks at private life within Bahrain's conservative society: love, relationships, growing up, loneliness and social expectations — all the things that exist quietly beneath the surface but aren't always shown or spoken about. And the title gives us a clue as to how Sharif approaches them. Rather than relying on provocation or explicit imagery, he keeps things deliberately veiled, working through atmosphere, suggestion and symbolism.

Much of the exhibition is deeply autobiographical, drawing on Sharif's own memories and experiences. Mirrors and reflective surfaces appear again and again, blurring the line between what's real, what's reflected and what might simply be memory or imagination.

Then there are the cheetah and the gazelle. Recurring throughout the works, they become a metaphor for the dynamics between people: predator and prey, strength and vulnerability, masculinity and femininity. Through them, Sharif touches on much bigger questions of patriarchy, gender roles and social expectations — without ever having to spell them out.

Exhibition: May The Tree No Longer Burn When I Wake
Dates: September 23 — November 5

May the Tree No Longer Burn When I Wake is the solo exhibition of Iranian artist Amir Khojasteh, and a continuation of his previous show, Living in a Burning House. That earlier exhibition was created while Amir was still living in Iran, with the “burning house” becoming a metaphor for the turbulent reality he was experiencing from within.

This time, the fire is still there, but Amir isn't inside the house anymore. After leaving Iran, he is looking back at it from a distance — at what has burned, what remains and, perhaps most importantly, what might come next. And that new position is imagined through a Persian garden.

Why a garden? Traditionally, the Persian garden was imagined as a small paradise carved out of a harsh landscape: walls around it, desert beyond them, and water, plants and life protected inside. Amir takes that familiar image and turns it slightly on its head. The gallery becomes the garden — a place of shelter, but not quite of escape. Its imaginary windows still look out onto a landscape marked by fire. You may have left, you may be safe, but what you left behind doesn't simply disappear from view.

And this is when the title, May the Tree No Longer Burn When I Wake, feels much less mysterious. It carries an almost childlike wish: to close your eyes, wake up and find that the fire you have been watching from afar has finally gone out.

Exhibition: Sojourner: The Difference Is the Same
Dates: September 23 — November 13

Sojourner: The Difference Is the Same is Maggie Otieno's first solo exhibition with Efie Gallery since the gallery began representing her in 2024. Otieno's practice spans almost three decades and centres on the transformation of old, used and damaged materials. The idea underpinning it all is simple but powerful: a material has already lived a life before it ever becomes art.

At the heart of the exhibition is a new body of work built around railway sleepers from Otieno's studio in Nairobi — objects directly tied to the colonial history of East Africa. These wooden beams are more than 150 years old. Back in the late 19th century, they were shipped from India to Kenya for railway construction and have been there ever since, quietly bearing witness to generations of travellers, labourers and communities moving along the same routes. 

Another part of the exhibition grew out of Otieno's 2025 residency at El Anatsui's studio in Ghana, where she worked with fragments of old wooden canoes. Some are hinged together like books — turning objects once made for journeys into carriers of their own histories. The past remains visible, but a new chapter begins. Seen this way, Sojourner isn't really about one literal traveller at all. It is about things that move through places, times and different lives, changing along the way while still carrying something of where they have been.

Exhibition: The Living Archive
Dates: September 21 – November 11

The Living Archive is the solo exhibition of Syrian artist Ahmad Tallaa, born in Damascus and now based in the UAE. Working across painting, sculpture and artist books, Tallaa often explores memory, identity and the traces our experiences leave behind.

And the exhibition's central idea is right there in the title: a person as a living archive of their own life. We usually think of an archive as a place for documents, photographs and letters. Tallaa shifts that idea onto the human body, asking what if our experiences are recorded in us instead? Everything we live through leaves a trace — on our faces and bodies, in our memories and character, and sometimes quite literally in our scars.

That is why surface and material matter so much here. Tallaa's portraits aren't smooth or polished: they are built from sand, chalk, pigment and acrylic, with cracks, uneven textures and layer upon layer of material. The faces seem to emerge from within all of this, almost as if they are being excavated rather than painted. And the idea behind it is surprisingly simple: to understand the person you see today, you also have to see the layers of everything that came before.