This year I didn’t visit as many exhibitions as I normally would in the UAE and abroad, mostly because there weren’t many that I actually wanted to see. As for artist talks or similar events in the UAE, so many were announced last minute, I found it difficult to schedule going to a few I would have liked to attend.

What does get overly promoted here are cultural events akin to mini festivals, a consumption and commodification of 'culture’ packaged to look 'Instagrammable’ and aiming for large ‘footfall’ just like shopping centres.
On regular days, most art exhibition spaces in the UAE are empty, I was the only one at the most of the exhibitions I visited here.

Out of the few exhibitions I visited, I’m happy I found works that have stayed with me. The following is a ranked list of favourite exhibitions or artworks of the year.
Text in quotation marks are extracts from the relevant websites featuring these exhibitions and artworks.

1. UNDERGROUND: American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s
Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
October 13, 2024 - January 5, 2025

For me, this exhibition felt like a short introduction to avant-garde cinema that I normally don’t have access to or enough opportunities to see. What stood out for me the most is that half of the artists in this exhibition are women, and the need to see more of their names and many others written about and discussed in mainstream discourse about cinema history. Films by Marie Menken was a new and favourite discovery for me.

Curated by Jaap Guldemond, Director of Exhibitions, and Mark Paul Meyer, senior curator of the Eye collection.

Artists: Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner, Storm De Hirsch, Maya Deren, Yayoi Kusama & Jud Yalkut, Hollis Frampton, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Gunvor Nelson, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek and Andy Warhol.

“The exhibition and film programme feature both iconic and lesser-known works, showcasing the era's vibrant experimental spirit. Highlights include films by pivotal avant-garde figures such as Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage, as well as contributions from prominent visual artists like Bruce Conner, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol. This exploration of cinematic innovation is set against the backdrop of a changing society.

Dancing bridges, introspective diary fragments and dreamy stop motions – just some examples of experiments carried out by a loose collection of avant-garde filmmakers in the 1960s in the United States.

Their aim: to shake off the fetters of Hollywood and the dominant film industry and to reinvent cinema, as it were, as a visual medium.”

2. The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde (1962–1987)
Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Hamriyah Studios and Old Al Diwan Al Amiri
February 24 – June 16 2024

Another exhibition about avant-garde art. There were a few film works in this, but overall, a great exhibition about a time in history when artists in Morocco were responding social and political change.

Mohammed Chabâa graphic design studio at the Casablanca Art School, 1966. Photo: M. Melehi © M. Melehi archives/estate.

Curated by Morad Montazami and Madeleine de Colnet for Zamân Books & Curating, with Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation; May Alqaydi, Assistant Curator at Sharjah Art Foundation

”In the exhilaration following Moroccan independence in 1956, staff and students at the Casablanca Art School (CAS) fomented an artistic revolution. They integrated abstract art with African and Amazigh traditions, taking inspiration from the region’s rugs, jewellery, calligraphy and painted ceilings. Declaring a new art for Morocco grown from Afro-Amazigh heritage, they created a cultural uprising that spread into the future.

Drawing on multicultural heritage, CAS staff and students brought art into everyday life, utilising paintings, posters, magazines, outdoor murals and street festivals to do so. This Moroccan ‘new wave’ triggered a social and urban movement, eventually contributing to artistic solidarities between Latin America, West Asia and Africa.”

3. Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage
The Photographers’ Gallery, London
October, 9 2024 - February 23, 2025

I am always curious and interested in collage, mainly because I feel I’ve not yet been able to crack it myself.
Despite the unpolished end result of Turbeville’s collages, they look very cinematic.

Deborah Turbeville, Page from Passport, ca.1990 © Deborah Turbeville/MUUS Collection

Curated by Nathalie Herschdorfer.

”Deborah Turbeville’s signature dreamlike and melancholic style became recognisable with her earliest works in the 1970s: enigmatic female figures, cloudy skies, wintry nature and abandoned, decaying surroundings. She deliberately distanced herself from the typical glamourous, polished aesthetic that dominated fashion at the time.

Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage presents Turbeville's trailblazing photographic explorations, from fashion photos to her very personal work. Bringing together unique pieces, the exhibition reveals Turbeville's highly personal artistic universe, which has been credited with transforming fashion imagery into avant-garde art.”

4. Bar Luna
Galleria Modernissimo, Bologna
June 18, 2024 - August 3, 2025

I posted photos and a few words about it here.

Exhibition-installation designed by Alice Rohrwacher and Muta Imago with the participation of Thierry Boutemy.

”Last year Alice Rohrwacher and Muta Imago (an artistic duo comprised of Claudia Sorace and Riccardo Fazi) created Bar Luna at the Centre Pompidou in Paris: an exhibition conceived as both a journey and as a bar from which to admire the Earth from a different perspective.

Now they have reunited to re-imagine a brand new version of the exhibition designed specifically for the underground space of the Cinema Modernissimo. Having entered through a normal, old-fashioned kitchen, visitors will suddenly find themselves in the midst of a star-studded sky in the centre of which stands the memory of an old, suburban bar. It is the starting point for a journey inspired by the themes and images of Alice Rohrwacher’s cinema, and in particular her latest film La chimera, which is inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Euridices: what should we make of our past? What are our roots?”

5. Children’s Art Exhibition
Kutubna Cultural Center, Dubai
December 7, 2024 - February 9, 2025

Curated by Norah Qudah.

Kutubna put out an open call last month inviting children to submit art works for an exhibition. The result is Kutubna’s first Children’s Art Exhibition and I really hope it becomes an annual one.

It includes 40 works by 17 young artists aged 1-18, from nine different nationalities, all living in the UAE.

I squealed with delight when I saw two paintings inspired by Samia Halabi and Andy Warhol, both by Salama Hassan, aged 8. The exhibition is wholesome and delightful, and I left feeling less cynical about the ‘art world’ that day.

6. Sheher, Prakriti, Devi
Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai
January 19 - June 1, 2024

This exhibition made space for works by artists that were not made for the ‘art market’, but for their themselves and for their families and communities they live in.

GAURI GILL & VINNIE GILL, Buildings and Trees
Archival pigment prints (photographs), pastel and watercolour on rough paper, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artists

Curated by Gauri Gill, in dialogue with Sabih Ahmed.

Artists: Chamba Rumal, Chiara Camoni, Gauri Gill, Ladhki Devi, Mariam Suhail, Meera Mukherjee, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Rashmi Kaleka, Shefalee Jain, Sukanya Ghosh, Vinnie Gill and Yoshiko Crow.

In Gill’s words, “Apart from the sheer beauty and multiple truths expressed by the different artists – from the mundane to the transcendental, the gross to the subtle, and, the manmade to the sacred – through this palimpsestic and idiosyncratic exhibition, I wish to acknowledge those who have found ways to stubbornly persist in their practice, often sharing their work only within their families and local communities, completely outside the circuits and networks of professional artists, contemporary art discourse, galleries and markets…

Through this gathering of insistent voices we hope to consider the dualistic worlds of the depleted and regenerative, manmade and natural, colonial and Indigenous, young and old, English and non-English, mundane and magical, absent and present.”

7. In Your Dreams
Bayt Al Mamzar, Dubai
August 3–October 27, 2024

As one of the very few independent art spaces in Dubai, Bayt Al Mamzar has rightly been gaining more attention this year and has had a busy calendar compared to last year. Besides the artist residencies and events like talks, studio visits, book readings, screenings and more, it hosted exhibitions by young artists and emerging curators, and an opportunity to see new work by curators and artists that are not the usual suspects.

This was my favourite out of the exhibitions they had this year.

Maryam Tafakory, Nazarbazi (still), 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Curated by Yalda Bidshahri.

Artists: Dorsa Asadi, Chupan Atashi, Gisou Golshani, Fatemeh Kazemi, Lilian Nejatpour, Niloofar Taatizadeh, Maryam Tafakory.

”What can we dream into reality? The newly commissioned and existing artworks in this exhibition often combine traditional elements of Iranian culture with imagination and provocation to offer emancipatory perspectives on identity and gender.”

8. The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves by Awoiska van der Molen
Huis Marseille, Amsterdam
June 22 - October 13, 2024

My favourite exhibition title this year, and I loved the silence captured in the photographs. I alsofound myself walking at a much slower pace when I was looking at the works in the museum.

Awoiska van der Molen, No. *480-18*, 2017/2024

Curated by Maarten Bertheux.

“Critically acclaimed for her psychological landscape images, Awoiska van der Molen started out by photographing urban environments in 2003, shortly after graduating from art school.

Now, more than twenty years on, she once again presents us with understated black-and-white photos of built-up environments that reveal traces of human presence. This time she zooms in on illuminated windows in the darkness of the evening.”

9. Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists
British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery, London
October 2024 - February 2025

Small in scale, and worthy of your time and attention. A selection of works that provoke timely questions about borders, politics and bureaucracy in the Middle East. I was happy for the opportunity to hear Daniel Lowe explain some of the works in this display.

Exhibition display installed in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery © Daniel Lowe

(*Left to right*) *Jawāz Safarī lil-Qirāʼah* [*My Reading Passport*] by al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts (c. 2000s) (ORB.30/9506); *Leave to Remain: a Single Syrian Grain, Airbourn* by Issam Kourbaj (2023) (ORB.30/9576). © al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts and Issam Kourbaj

Curator: Daniel Lowe

”Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’ is a new single-case display in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery. It highlights artists, photographers, designers and arts activists from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and Iran who, through artists’ books and artist-led publications, zines, photobooks and print ephemera, have reworked the concept, materiality and function of passports and other bureaucratic documents.”

“Examining the design politics of the passport, Mahmoud Keshavarz writes: ‘[T]he passport is not neutral but a real and powerful device with its own specific history, design, and politics, mediating moments through which socially constructed power relations can be enacted and performed.’

He notes that just as passports “mediate experiences of moving, residing, and, consequently, acting in the world” they can also be “remediated” through cultural and artistic works. He writes: ‘These works, through acknowledging the brutality of the passport as a system of control, deception, and regulation, try to open this banal booklet and redirect it as an object of thinking, imagination, and memory with the hope of reworking the hegemonic narrative prescribed to them.’”

10. Works from William Kentridge: A Shadow of a Shadow
Sharjah Art Foundaation,Bait Al Serkal
September 28 - December 8, 2024

William Kentridge, *Zeno Writing*, 2002. From ‘Zeno’, 2001–2002 © Photo: Motaz Mawid. Courtesy of SAF

Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, and Tarek Abou El Fetouh, Senior Curator and Director of the Performance Department, with May Alqaydi, Assistant Curator, and Khalid Mohammed, Curatorial Assistant, Sharjah Art Foundation.

A survey of 17 performances created Kentridge from the late 1980s to the present, and I found myself impressed with the design of the exhibition, the colours, materials and furniture used for the installations, and the overall use of the space in Bait Al Serkal in a way I’ve not seen done effectively before.

William Kentridge, *Learning the Flute*, 2003. From ‘The Magic Flute’, 2005 © Photo: Motaz Mawid. Courtesy of SAF

I visited the exhibition with an architect, so in addition to enjoying the works, it helped me notice and learn more about the details of the installations.

11. Works from Edge of Land
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
May 23 - September 29, 2024

Curated by Lucas Morin, Edge of Land is an exhibition about port cities and coastlines and relationships between landscapes and trade.

These two works stood out for me (images from Jameel Arts Centre’s website):

Top: Joar Songcuya: Reclining Seaman, Mariners on Deck, At the Railing, Five Seamen, 2023, Oil on canvas, 28 × 33 cm; 28 × 33 cm; 28 × 33 cm; 28 × 48 cm, Courtesy of the artist
Bottom: Joar Songcuya: Passage to Suez: View at the Port, Port of Yanbu, LoadingnOil, Cargo Manifold At the Canal, Three Ships and Three Tugboats, Two Palm Trees at the Desert, Ship at the Gulf, 2023, Crayon on paper, Series of 8, 46 × 61 cm each, Courtesy of the artist, Commissioned by Art Jameel

Drawings and paintings by Joer Songcuya
”Joar Songcuya is a self-taught artist and a former marine engineer with a decade of seafaring experience. He began painting in his cabin, where he documented life on board. For him, painting served as an escape from the harsh realities of life at sea. These scenes range from joy and camaraderie to tension and conflict, often stemming from fatigue and isolation.

In response to the challenging environment he worked in, the artist also drew and painted several self-portraits, delving into a more introspective realm. Drawings made especially for this exhibition are drawn from Songcuya’s recollections of the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and Saudi Arabian ports. Working on oil tankers afforded him the opportunity to witness ports designed exclusively for oil shipping, typically situated at a considerable distance from urban areas.”

Images courtesy of Jameel Arts Centre.

Au Sow Yee, Pirates, the Trembling Ship and their 1001, Nights I: Rock and Ro, 2022
Video, 5 min. 37 s., Lyrics by Au Sow Yee, Music composed and sung by KonFuFighting / 420Hz StandardBureau, With tunes and lyrics from Row Row Row Your Boat, Courtesy of the artist

Pirates, the Trembling Ship and their 1001 Nights I: Rock and Row by Au Sow Yee

“A karaoke video recounts the tale of a fictional 18th-century pirate named Abdullah Al Haj. Written by the artist, the song describes Abdullah’s background, born in Britain but raised in Arabia. His life journey led him to engage in piracy in the Strait of Malacca, ultimately resulting in his capture in British Malaya.

During the pinnacle of the British Empire in the 19th century, a web of global maritime trade networks – established by the British for their own advantage – connected nations across the world. Though fictional, Au Sow Yee’s tale connects to a historical context where allegations of piracy often served to vilify a wide range of informal trade activities and resistance, conveniently justifying the imposition of colonial authority.”

12. Women’s Work: From Craft to Fine Art, Reclaiming Arab Textile Art
November 9, 2024 - January 16, 2025
BEEAH Headquarters, Sharjah

An unexpected location for an exhibition, BEEAH Headquarters is a building designed by Zaha Hadid that I’ve driven by many times, and this was the first I had the opportunity to get a closer look. A well lit and spacious exhibition space, featuring beautiful works from the 1950s-2020s, about community, heritage, knowledge transfer and women’s labour, heritage and community.

Nadia Mohammed, Garden Plants, 2021, Tapestry, 110 x 150 cm
Photo by Hind Mezaina.

Curated by Nour Hage.

“Beyond their function as everyday objects in the Arab context, textiles in the region have acted as a tool to transmit knowledge, culture and identity intergenerationally.

The artists featured in this exhibition have reclaimed and reimagined textile practices, elevating them beyond the confines of craft to challenge preconceived notions or art, identity and cultural heritage. Historically associated with female domestic labour, weaving and embroidery in these artworks are transformed into mediums for personal and social commentary.”

“The artworks in Women’s Work range from the 1950s to the 2020s and were created by artists from across the Arab world. These works are both deeply personal and socially engaged. The artists are not merely preserving tradition but are actively reshaping it for a contemporary context.”

Extracts from Barjeel Art Foundation.

All the exhibitions/events in art institutions I visited this year:

UAE

Dubai
Bayt Al Mamzar:
Crystal Clear
In Your Dreams

Foundry: Fictional Landscapes

Gulf Photo Plus: Landing

Ishara Art Foundation:
https://www.ishara.org/exhibition/sheher-prakriti-devi/
https://www.ishara.org/exhibition/ayesha-sultana-fragility-and-resilience/

Jameel Arts Centre:
Artist’s Rooms: Amba Sayal-Bennett, Augustine Paredes, Sancintya Mohini Simpson + Artist talk
At the Edge of Land
Vikram Divecha: Short Circuits
Library Circles: Azza Aboualam
Nour Ouayda: The Secret Garden
Noor Abed: A Night We Held Between
Nadi Abusaada: Talk – The Profession’s Vanguards: Arab Architects in Mandate Jerusalem
Night School 2024 - Lecture, Book Launch
Three Tired Tigers
Trần Lương: Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain
The Youth Takeover 2024 + Lecture, Film screening and talk

Kutubna Cultural Center:
Children’s Art Exhibition
Rana AlMutawa: Everyday Life in the Spectacular City

The Third Line: Farah Al Qasimi: Toy World