Every September, the UAE’s art world seems to collectively wake up. After the long summer pause, galleries reopen, museums roll out new programmes and the cultural calendar is packed with the latest happenings.

But there is one more constant that does not get talked about enough and yet is lamented in whispered hushes in every room: the art scene is pretentious.

Too niche. Too intimidating. Too much jargon. I don't get it.

I understand the impulse. There is something particularly intimidating about walking into a pristine gallery where everyone else appears to know exactly how to look at a pile of steel, a video loop or a painting of something that may or may not be a horse. Contemporary art can sometimes seem to come with its own language, its own rules and an expectation that you should already know both.

Sometimes, that criticism is deserved. The art world can be insular. Institutions can make perfectly good ideas sound impenetrable. And there is certainly a particular pleasure some corners of the creative world seem to take in turning a fairly straightforward thought into a 400-word curatorial statement.

But is all of it pretentious?

I don't think so.

You can go because you are curious. Because the title sounds interesting. Because you have 45 minutes to kill. Because you like beautiful things. Because you hate beautiful things. Because you have been thinking about memory, home, loneliness, migration, climate or what it means to belong — and suddenly an artist has spent three years thinking about exactly that question.

After more than six years of working around the arts, one of the most comforting things I have learned is that art is fundamentally about perspective. There may be an artist’s intention. There may be historical context. There may even be a very good argument for what a work is doing.

But your response to it is still your own. You are not required to find the “right” answer.

Just being moved by something — even if the critic next to you hates it — is enough. You are allowed to hate something everyone else is raving about. You are allowed to look at a work and think, I genuinely don't understand this.

And perhaps, instead of stopping there, ask yourself one more question:

Why?

Because that discomfort, confusion or disagreement is often the beginning of actually looking. And that, to me, is the point.

Art is one of the few places where a room full of people can look at the same thing and walk away having experienced something completely different. That diversity of perspective is part of what makes art such a uniquely human record of how we see the world.

Perhaps what looks like pretension from the outside is sometimes something else: a creative has spent months, years, perhaps a lifetime thinking deeply about an idea, and then done the rather vulnerable thing of putting that thinking in front of strangers.

Yes, art spaces can be intimidating and the language around art can absolutely become exclusionary. But dismissing art as pretentious can also be a way of refusing to engage with something simply because it asks more of us than immediate comprehension. And how else is it art going to become more widely experienced — it risks staying “too niche”.

What you possibly consider pretentious is how deeply a creative has put their heart and soul into understanding a concept – and painstakingly put it out for the world to see.

You don't have to agree with it. But would you care to actually engage with it?

So in case you are open to being moved by a piece of heart, the UAE’s autumn art season is a good excuse to start. Here is what is on — and why you might find it meaningful.

If the sheer number of exhibitions at Alserkal Avenue feels overwhelming, that is because it is. This September, 19 exhibitions opened across 16 galleries and art spaces, covering everything from painting and sculpture to textiles, film and installation.

Don't try to see everything. Pick a question instead.

At Ishara Art Foundation, The Sky Held It, The Earth Remembered brings together Rohini Devasher, Sarker Protick and Shahana Rajani around land, water and the cosmos as living archives. But in this short, impactful exhibit, the underlying message is surprisingly loud: art matters. The exhibition runs until December 15.

At Firetti Contemporary, Ahmad Tallaa's The Living Archive turns the human face into a record of experience. If you have ever looked at an old photograph of yourself and realised you can see an entire period of your life in your face, you already have an entry point.

At Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Bénédicte Gimonnet's What We Carry Becomes the Terrain considers landscape, inheritance and belonging through painting, drawing and textiles. This one is for anyone who has complicated feelings about the word home.

Efie Gallery presents Maggie Otieno’s first solo exhibition, Sojourner: The Difference is On, until November 13. It features sculptures made from reclaimed railway sleepers and found materials – reminding you to creatively rethink how we see objects that surround us.

Green Art Gallery's Private World considers solitude and inward attention. Grey Noise's The Importance of Staying Quiet: 6. Open Forms makes a case for stillness and abstraction at a time when we are constantly overwhelmed with noise: advertisements, theories, digital clutter.

At Jameel Arts Centre, the autumn programme offers a different kind of way in.

Three Artist's Rooms — Walid Siti, Lulua Alyahya and Shezad Dawood — opened on September 20 and run through January 31.

Lulua Alyahya's first UAE solo exhibition considers Gulf masculinity through intimate paintings that move between tenderness, humour, memory and imagination. Walid Siti brings together four decades of work shaped in part by exile, war and displacement. Shezad Dawood's practice moves between art, film, technology and speculative thinking.

The useful thing about the Jameel is that you can also go for something completely unrelated to contemporary-art homework. There is the building, the creek, the garden, the library. You can have coffee. You can look at one exhibition and leave.

Abu Dhabi’s well-loved 421 has much to offer all year round, but October is where things really pick up. On October 4, 421 opens its Fall 2026 exhibitions: Juma Alhaj: Revelation and Archipelago of Whispers, curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr. Both run until January 10.

Revelation unfolds as an immersive installation built around light, material and inscription, gradually moving the visitor towards a more inward state of attention. Useful, if you’re trying to contemplate the inner workings of your mind, or if your idea of an exhibition is that you should be able to photograph it in five seconds and move on, this may be a useful corrective.

Archipelago of Whispers is interested in the unofficial ways knowledge travels: gossip, whispers, storytelling, sound and silence. Which makes it unexpectedly relatable. Most of what we know about other people — and most of what other people know about us — arrived through someone telling someone something.

You are allowed to have the wrong reaction

Perhaps this is the thing I would like more people to remember about the UAE's art season.

You don't need to know who the artist is before you walk in.

You don't need to understand the wall text.

You don't need to know what discursive practice means.

You don't even have to like the work.

In fact, “I don't like this” is a perfectly respectable place to begin looking.

The more interesting question is: why?

Why does one painting make you uncomfortable? Why does a piece of fabric remind you of your grandmother? Why does an installation about borders make you think about the city you live in? Why does an abstract painting suddenly look like a childhood memory? Why does a room full of silence make you want to leave — or stay?

That is already engagement with art.

The UAE's autumn season gives us plenty of opportunities to do exactly that. You can go to Alserkal and spend an hour wandering. You can go to Jameel and explore its surrounding spaces.You can make a trip to 421 and take part in creative workshops. You can catch Bayt AlMamzar and explore what narratives homegrown artistic spaces are reflecting on.

You don't have to become an art person – just go look at some things. You’ll find that they add more value than you think in sensemaking this crazy, chaotic world we live in.