UAE art guide: Nine exhibitions to see, from Unseen Script at Rizk to Precarious Beings at Tashkeel

1. In Plain Sight at Gallery Isabelle Alia Zaal's latest solo exhibition showcases the UAE landscape through paintings, works on paper, and ceramic pieces. The artist explores fragments of familiar trees, plants, and environments, turning them into works shaped by memory and interpretation. Zaal's approach challenges traditional landscape art by treating the subject as constantly transformed by the viewer's perspective and personal experience.

2. In Abstracto, In Concreto: On Memory and Presence at Efie Gallery features four African artists whose works move between figuration and abstraction. The exhibition explores identity, memory, and diasporic experience through the use of the human body as a site of personal histories, cultural inheritance, and imagination. Each artist challenges straightforward readings of figurative painting and illustrates the complexity of bodies shaped by movement, belonging, and life across cultures.

3. Tangerine Dreams at Ayyam Gallery brings together artists of various generations around the single subject of the color orange. The exhibition explores how a single hue can evoke contrasting associations, moving between warmth, intensity, celebration, nostalgia, and more. Works by artists such as Sama Alshaibi, Abdalla Al Omari, and others use orange as a starting point to investigate memory, landscape, identity, and transformation.

4. Body Quotidian at Sharjah Art Foundation presents recent works by Laila Majid and Inaam Zafar in dialogue. Both artists approach the human body through metaphor, material, and everyday experience. The exhibition considers how bodies are perceived, altered, and contained, particularly in relation to technology's impact on youth, beauty, truth, and the evolving notions of identity and presence.

5. Vantage Point 13 at Sharjah Art Foundation marks a new chapter for the exhibition platform as it relocates to the institution's dedicated photography gallery. Six artists present newly commissioned photographic series developed with the foundation's support. The show reflects a wide range of practices across the country, from photography, works on paper, to sculpture, design, craft, and painting, demonstrating the diverse artistic landscape in the UAE.