LEBANON
After eight years, Khalil Rabah returns to Lebanon with a two-part solo exhibition Some Other Things Ruled It (27 August – 30 December, 2026) at Sfeir Semler Gallery’s Karantina and Downtown spaces. The Karantina presentation revisits and expands Transition, among other things, previously shown at Special Projects/Art Basel Qatar, where everyday objects are rearranged into an unsettling labyrinth of obstruction, surveillance and transformation. Drawing on the absurdity of Dada and the legacy of the readymade, Rabah shifts familiar objects from their everyday functions into ambiguous sculptural forms. In Downtown, new works on paper trace cut olive tree trunks as they move between destruction and repair, alongside a monumental Palestinian thob assembled from garments collected from women across Palestinian villages. Across both spaces, the exhibition considers how objects carry, lose and acquire meaning through transformation.
At the Upper Gallery at Saleh Barakat Gallery, Memory Keepers (1 September – 30 September 2026) brings together a series of portraits by Yasmina Nysten that sit between recognition and abstraction. Her figures are not portraits of particular individuals, but imagined presences shaped through the artist’s interest in the experience of encountering another consciousness. Across the paintings, muted fields of colour, abrupt gestures and carefully observed details give form to characters that resist fixed interpretation. Nysten approaches the portrait less as a record of identity than as an encounter with what remains elusive: a face, a gesture, a presence. The resulting figures hover between the familiar and the unknowable, offering fragments rather than narratives and inviting attention to the quiet, unresolved space between seeing and understanding.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Between Memory and Imagination (until 13 September 2026) brings together an international group of artists whose practices consider how personal and collective histories are carried into the present and reshaped through imagination. Presented at Leila Heller Gallery Dubai, the exhibition moves between painting, sculpture, glass, photography, ceramics, mirror, mixed media and installation. Participating artists include Aref Montazeri, Atieh Sohrabi, Bahar Sabzevari, Baran Shafiey, Behrang Samadzadegan, Dale Chihuly, Katya Traboulsi, Reza Aramesh, Reza Derakshani and Shiva Ahmadi, among others. Across the exhibition, themes of displacement, identity, mythology, home and belonging emerge through varied material approaches. Divided between figurative and abstract practices, the works treat materials as vessels for recollection, from Chihuly’s luminous glass to Montazeri’s reflective surfaces and Derakshani’s layered paintings.
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), a new media arts centre in Diriyah under Saudi Arabia’s Museums Commission, will present CONTINUUM ’26 (3 September – 7 November 2026). Curated by Irini Papadimitriou, the exhibition brings together work by 16 emerging artists developed through DAF’s year-long Emerging New Media Artists Programme. Spanning immersive installation, light, sound, moving image, virtual and mixed reality, and AI, the works consider memory, systems of power, embodiment and collective experience. The exhibition marks the second edition of DAF’s annual series, which supports artistic practices at the intersection of art, science and technology. Works by programme mentors Louis-Philippe Demers and Rick Treweek will accompany the artists’ projects, extending the exhibition’s exploration of shifting relationships between the physical and the digital.
QATAR
Qatar Museums will present Uzbekistan: Heritage in Motion at the Museum of Islamic Art from 3 September to 28 November 2026, tracing more than 1,000 years of Uzbek artistic and cultural history. Organised with Uzbekistan’s Art and Culture Development Foundation, the exhibition brings together 146 objects from Qatari and Uzbek collections, spanning manuscripts, architectural fragments, ceramics, jewellery and textiles. Across four sections, it considers Uzbekistan as a crossroads where Islamic traditions continue to inform contemporary life. Highlights include a seventh-century Afrasiab wall painting, scientific manuscripts, a fifteenth-century astrolabe and examples of suzani embroidery. The exhibition also extends an institutional partnership focused on conservation, research and public programming.
The second edition of Frame and Focus (5 September – 5 October 2026) brings together emerging photographers from Qatar and the wider region at Al Hosh Gallery, following Tasweer’s 14-week Advanced Photography Course. The exhibition presents documentary, portrait and conceptual photography shaped by questions of identity, memory, heritage, migration and belonging. More than 12 photographers translate personal experiences and cultural contexts into intimate studies of place and contemporary life. The programme pairs participants with international photographers, editors, curators and filmmakers, including Alessia Glaviano, Gary Knight, Anush Babajanyan, Fiona Turner, M’Hammed Kilito, Rena Effendi, Rola Khayyat and Ziyah Gafić. Together, the works trace varied approaches to photography, moving between personal narratives and wider questions of place, memory and belonging.
THE WORLD
Art Week Syria will launch its inaugural edition in Damascus this September, bringing together artists, collectors, cultural institutions and emerging practitioners across a programme spanning exhibitions, film screenings, musical performances and talks. Conceived as a platform for reconnecting different strands of Syria’s artistic and cultural scene, the inaugural week will unfold at Massar Rose from 13 – 18 September 2026. The programme will open with a reception on 11 September, gathering figures from the country’s cultural and artistic communities ahead of the week’s activities. As a first edition, the initiative reflects a renewed effort to create spaces for exchange and visibility within Damascus, bringing contemporary practices and established cultural voices into closer conversation.
