UAE art guide: 11 exhibitions to see, from Unseen Script at Rizq to Revelation at 421

Here are 11 exhibitions to see across the UAE during the country's autumn art season:

1. Unseen Script at Rizq Art Initiative showcases works by ten artists exploring patterns formed through repetition. Curated by Meena Vari, the exhibition brings together art in various mediums, including painting, sculpture, and mixed media. The pieces reflect personal habits and ways of seeing, revealing how memory, consciousness, and observation can uncover patterns that data cannot.

2. Taking Form at The Third Line presents Rana Begum's fifth solo exhibition, featuring new works across textile, linen, wood, and paper. The exhibition explores light, color, geometry, and material, with large wool tapestries suspended from the ceiling and smaller works on paper and wooden panels. Begum's practice introduces a greater sense of softness while retaining abstraction and geometric structures.

3. Between Land and Sea at Leila Heller Gallery examines Emirati identity and heritage through the multidisciplinary practice of Azza Al Qubaisi. The exhibition features intimate jewellery and large-scale public works, connecting the UAE's desert and coastal environments with ideas of memory, identity, and place.

4. Between a Fold and a Memory at Leila Heller Gallery explores the clothing, textiles, and objects associated with Emirati women. Through photography, sculpture, textile, and video, Karima Al Shomely delves into how these materials carry memories of labor, social change, and cultural knowledge across generations.

5. Sojourner: The Difference is the Same at Efie Gallery features Kenyan artist Maggie Otieno transforming reclaimed materials into vessels of memory. The exhibition, her first solo show with Efie Gallery, includes works made from 150-year-old railway sleepers and sculptures incorporating fragments of wooden canoes produced during a residency in Ghana.

6. The Horizon We Inherit at Iris Projects showcases Emirati artist Eman Al Hashemi's first solo exhibition with the gallery. Al Hashemi examines the changing rhythms of urban life in the UAE through ceramics, printmaking, and mixed media. The works explore how cities shape attention, memory, and daily routines, turning familiar features of the UAE cityscape into forms that appear both recognisable and strange.

7. Vantage Point 13 at Sharjah Art Foundation marks a new chapter for the institution's photography platform. Selected through an international open call, six artists present commissioned photographic series developed with Sharjah Art Foundation's curatorial and production support.