As Dubai’s art season bursts into full swing, the city’s galleries are alive with energy, reflection, and creative transformation. From Alserkal Avenue’s conceptual showrooms to DIFC’s sleek art spaces and Downtown’s hybrid cultural hubs, this fall marks one of the most dynamic moments of the year for contemporary art lovers. In this feature, we focus exclusively on Dubai’s exhibitions — because if we tried to cover Abu Dhabi and Sharjah too, we would have a book, not an article.

Across the city, artists explore memory, identity, and transformation in diverse and powerful ways. Aidha Badr’s intimate meditation on motherhood at Firetti Contemporary, Elias Izoli’s circus of human emotion at Ayyam Gallery, and Abdelkader Benchamma’s cosmic ink drawings at Gallery Isabelle each reveal a world within worlds. From the shimmering cross-cultural dialogues of The Shape of Things to Come at Efie Gallery to the material poetics at RARARES, Dubai continues to cement its place as a global nexus for art and ideas.

Whether you are in Alserkal, DIFC, or Downtown, the message is clear — the art season has officially begun, and this is what you can’t miss.

Where? Firetti Contemporary, Alserkal Avenue

When? Until November 7

Firetti Contemporary & Hunna Art Gallery present one of the hottest exhibitions in the avenue right now. Please, please, please see it before it is gone!

In I’m Never Coming Back, artist Aidha Badr transforms the experience of personal transformation into a deeply introspective visual language. This solo exhibition unfolds like a quiet diary of becoming, tracing the irreversible shift that accompanies motherhood. Badr doesn't treat it as a theme to be explained, but as an emotional current shaping gesture, colour, and rhythm.

Her raw, intimate paintings — fragmented self-portraits punctuated by handwritten text — capture the liminal space between who she was and who she is becoming. The figures appear as distant Madonnas: protective yet self-possessed, reflecting both tenderness and authority. Across her canvases, phrases such as “Stay with me a little longer” and “I’m not the same and I’m never coming back” reveal a dialogue between presence and change, between memory and renewal.

Throughout the exhibition, the horse emerges as a recurring motif — a symbol of transition, resilience, and grace. Whether appearing as fragile toy forms or strong, towering figures, the horses mirror the artist’s acceptance of transformation as an act of courage. Badr’s work resonates with the psychological intimacy of Alice Neel and the maternal dualities explored by Louise Bourgeois, folding tenderness and ambivalence into the same gesture. Ultimately, I’m Never Coming Back isn't a farewell but a meditation on evolution — an acknowledgment that identity, love, and time are never static but endlessly unfolding.

Where? Ayyam Gallery, Alserkal Avenue

When? Until November 7

After a long hiatus, Syrian artist Elias Izoli returns with Inside Out ’25, a deeply emotive body of work that transforms the circus into a metaphor for the human condition. Through performers — tightrope walkers, clowns, and magicians — Izoli reflects on the fragile balance between joy and survival. His fragmented, collage-style paintings capture resilience, illusion, and melancholy, revealing the hidden emotional weight carried by his figures. Behind their vibrant colours and playful gestures lies a quiet sorrow, a meditation on the toll of prolonged conflict and the endurance of the human spirit.

Influenced by Syrian modernist Louay Kayyali, Izoli reinterprets Salvator Mundi as a shifting clown figure — a wildcard of transformation amid chaos. His characters juggle not objects but emotions: anxiety, manipulation, hope, and despair. Each canvas invites viewers to look beyond spectacle into the psyche of survival. Inside Out ’25 marks both a renewal of Izoli’s voice and a poignant reflection on the delicate act of balance that defines life itself.

Where? Leila Heller Gallery, Alserkal Avenue

When? Until November 30

The Floating Table by Morteza Khosravi transforms intimate moments of gatherings and celebrations into meditations on memory, absence, and the continuity of human experience. Drawing from personal archives and the tradition of figurative painting, Khosravi explores how images evolve over time, dissolving into silence and stillness. Faces, objects, and spaces fade into muted tones, revealing the fragile boundary between presence and absence. His restrained palette and subtle light create a suspended atmosphere — inviting viewers to reconstruct their own memories within the shared emotional space of his canvases.

Khosravi’s practice emphasises the act of seeing and the expressive possibilities of paint itself. Each canvas becomes an open field of process and discovery, balancing between gesture and revelation. Influenced by Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, and Gerhard Richter, his works offer quiet reflections on time, perception, and human connection. With The Floating Table, Leila Heller Gallery continues its commitment to fostering cross-cultural artistic dialogue, presenting a contemplative exhibition that turns ordinary recollections into timeless visual poetry.

Where? Gallery Isabelle, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

When? Until November 2

Gallery Isabelle presents Rumors from the Skies, the third solo exhibition by acclaimed French artist Abdelkader Benchamma. Drawing inspiration from The Comet Book (Kometenbuch), a mysterious 16th-century Flemish treatise depicting celestial omens, Benchamma explores humanity’s enduring fascination with the skies. Through intricate ink drawings and a monumental wall installation, the artist examines how myth, science, and superstition intertwine to shape our understanding of the cosmos. His surreal compositions — meteorites suspended over forests and horizons — merge precision and ambiguity, inviting viewers to linger in the threshold between the known and the imagined.

Benchamma’s practice merges meticulous draftsmanship with philosophical inquiry, blending the tangible and the transcendental. In this exhibition, he introduces an immersive mural paired with a projected animation, conjuring a celestial vortex filled with otherworldly fragments — satellite debris, fossilised planets, and shifting forms. By collapsing the distance between physical and metaphysical realms, Rumors from the Skies transforms observation into meditation. Benchamma, a former nominee for the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2024) and exhibitor at the Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), continues to redefine the boundaries of drawing, offering viewers not just an image of the universe — but an invitation to sense its silent, infinite pulse.

Where? Efie Gallery, Alserkal Avenue

When? Until January 10, 2026

Efie Gallery presents The Shape of Things to Come, curated by Japan-based American curator Dexter Wimberly, bringing together an extraordinary lineup of artists including El Anatsui, Iman Issa, Abdoulaye Konaté, Adam Pendleton, Yinka Shonibare, and Carrie Mae Weems. Through painting and sculpture, the exhibition explores transformation, cultural dialogue, and the power of art to mirror the world’s shifting realities. Each artist contributes a distinctive voice: Anatsui’s monumental metallic mosaics engage with global trade and materiality; Issa reinterprets historical artifacts through minimal abstraction; and Konaté’s vibrant textiles convey stories of resilience rooted in Malian tradition.

Pendleton’s layered compositions, Shonibare’s witty hybrid masks, and Weems’s poignant photographic reflections on power and memory further expand this dialogue. Together, their works embody art’s adaptability and relevance in turbulent times, offering both critique and beauty. Set within Dubai’s creative hub of Alserkal Avenue, The Shape of Things to Come positions Efie Gallery as a vital bridge between Africa, the Middle East, and the wider global art scene, reaffirming its role as a home for cross-cultural exchange and artistic innovation.

Where? NIKA Project Space

When? Until November 1

Rooted Echoes brings together the works of Ahed Al Kathiri, Yasmine Al Awa, and Zahra Jewanjee in a dialogue about memory, identity, and belonging. Curated by Nadine Khoury, the exhibition emerges from the artists’ participation in NIKA Project Space’s summer residency, where each explored how cultural inheritance can be retrieved, reframed, and made tangible. Al Awa’s hyperrealistic paintings capture intimate interiors from her grandparents’ home in Syria — spaces that become emotional archives of family memory and selfhood. In contrast, Al Kathiri’s multimedia practice combines textiles, sound, and performance to reanimate her Yemeni heritage. Recordings of her grandmother’s hymns echo through the gallery, transforming personal recollection into collective resonance. A score mapping the flow of breath and sound visually connects the oral to the physical, weaving ancestral memory into the present.

Completing this conversation, Zahra Jewanjee approaches identity through the lens of ecology. Her large-scale canvases center the Ghaf tree, a symbol of endurance and rootedness in the UAE, as a metaphor for displacement and resilience. The tree’s quiet strength mirrors the process of adapting to change while remaining grounded. Across their distinct practices, the three artists chart deeply personal cartographies of home, where voice meets silence, and material meets memory. Rooted Echoes reminds us that belonging is never static — it is a process in motion, a living archive of connection across generations and geographies.

Where? Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai

When? Until February 22, 2026

Self-Portrait with a Cat I Don’t Have is Bady Dalloul’s first institutional solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates, curated by Lucas Morin. Blending autobiography with historical and political reflection, Dalloul creates intimate works that explore how personal stories intersect with larger systems of power. Using everyday materials such as books, magazines, matchboxes, and board games, he constructs poetic narratives that merge fact and fiction, high and low culture, and connect non-Western identities across geographies. The exhibition features Age of Empires, a new series of 50 works on paper inspired by a 19th-century Japanese astrology manual, and Matchboxes, dozens of miniature drawings depicting scenes from daily life and political memory in Syria.

Presented within a recreated version of his Dubai apartment-studio, the exhibition traces the artist’s nomadic journey between France, Japan, and the UAE. His time in Japan deepened his engagement with cultural representation, inspiring works that reflect on migration, belonging, and perception. Through humor and subtle dissonance, Dalloul questions how history is written and remembered, positioning imagination as a tool of resistance. As the second chapter in his Land of Dreams series — following the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo — this exhibition affirms Dalloul’s place among the most distinctive voices exploring identity and memory in contemporary art.

Where? Opera Gallery, DIFC

When? Until November 17

Opera Gallery Dubai presents The Raw and the Cooked, the first solo exhibition in the UAE by Philadelphia-based artist Thomas Dillon, featuring a striking new series of large-scale paintings that merge figuration and abstraction. Borrowing its title from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s seminal text, the exhibition explores dualities such as nature and culture, immediacy and construction, embracing tension over resolution. Dillon’s canvases oscillate between raw gesture and deliberate form, capturing the instability and constant transformation of meaning. His layered compositions embody a living surface — unfixed, physical, and open to interpretation.

Positioning painting as a space of confrontation in the digital age, Dillon reclaims slowness, materiality, and ambiguity as acts of resistance. As he notes, “Painting can no longer compete with photography or algorithms — it survives by being large, physical, unresolved, and immediate.” Presented at a pivotal moment in his career, The Raw and the Cooked affirms Dillon’s belief in painting as a mythic and experiential form — an encounter that demands presence, reflection, and emotional engagement.

Where? RARARES Gallery,DIFC

When? Until November 21

AMINA ILLUMINATI at RARARES Gallery redefines light, body, and material as living processes rather than static symbols. Taking inspiration from Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman philosophy, the exhibition examines transformation through vulnerability and visibility. Light here isn't divine or decorative — it is a quiet act of revelation. The works of Alessandro Montalbano, Alyazya Almansoori, Hadil Moufti, Elnaz Javani, and Valeriya Isyak form a dialogue between personal memory and collective experience, where illumination becomes a metaphor for becoming.

Each artist engages with material as an archive of emotion and history: Montalbano’s bronze sculptures vibrate with energy; Almansoori’s Unveil juxtaposes cultural signifiers; Moufti’s textural works reclaim the maternal home as a site of resilience; Javani transforms skin and fabric into embodied narratives; and Isyak’s porcelain forms render fragility as resistance. Together, their works move from the individual to the universal, inviting viewers into a space where the boundaries between self, matter, and light blur. AMINA ILLUMINATI resists spectacle, offering instead a meditative reflection on emergence, care, and transformation within Dubai’s evolving contemporary art landscape.

Where? Foundry, Downtown Dubai

When? Until October 20

Spaces: Series of Captured Objects at Foundry reimagines the role of photography as both document and emotion. Featuring Raghe Farah, Daron Bandeira, Ron John, Laura Puscasu, Faxon, Afrorabian, and Preschelle Ann Bigueras, the exhibition explores how space and form shape memory, movement, and identity. Each artist transforms their environment into a collaborator — where texture, light, and colour become expressions of belonging and transformation.

Through contrasting visual languages, the artists present a collective portrait of contemporary Dubai: cosmopolitan yet deeply personal, grounded in place yet open to fluid narratives. From Bandeira’s striking portraits of African identity to Puscasu’s sculptural explorations of emotion, Spaces captures the poetry of coexistence. It invites viewers to move beyond the image, to see photography as an evolving dialogue between body, object, and the unseen spaces that connect them.

Where? Form & Seasons Gallery, Palm Jumeirah

When? From October 17

Form & Seasons Gallery inaugurates its Dubai space with The Eastern Universe, a showcase that bridges heritage and contemporary vision. Honoring legendary masters Ivan Aivazovsky, Martiros Saryan, and Paul Guiragossian, the exhibition highlights their enduring influence on Eastern and Arab art, celebrating themes of light, identity, and cultural memory.