Dubai’s galleries are in full swing this week, offering a range of exhibitions that span continents, materials, and memories. Whether you’re drawn to densely layered tapestries, haunting reflections on war, or immersive installations rooted in heritage, there’s something happening right now that speaks to both the personal and the political. Here are four standout shows worth catching before they close.
Morteza Khazaie at Leila Heller Gallery: “A Moon Without a Name”
In his solo show A Moon Without a Name, Afghan artist Morteza Khazaie transforms fragments of cloth, calligraphy, and memory into layered textile works that blur the line between painting and collage. Each piece carries personal resonance—childhood recollections, ancient Persian poetry, the shock of war—yet remains intentionally open-ended. Khazaie’s signature use of embroidery and recycled fabric becomes a quiet but pointed act of resistance, asserting softness and intimacy against a backdrop of displacement. The show’s title, a nod to a line by poet Forough Farrokhzad, suggests the search for identity in the face of rupture. What emerges is a visual language steeped in beauty and grief, one that speaks across borders. The works might be stitched from scraps, but they hold entire worlds together.
On view until April 30, 2025, at Leila Heller Gallery, Alserkal Avenue.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons at Efie Gallery: “I Am Soil. My Tears Are Water”
Efie Gallery presents I Am Soil. My Tears Are Water, a deeply poetic solo exhibition by María Magdalena Campos-Pons, marking the artist’s debut in the UAE. Spanning new watercolours and sculpture, the show foregrounds plants—hibiscus, heliconia, sugarcane, guava—as carriers of memory, history, and healing. Painted with a tender touch, her watercolours blur the line between botanical illustration and spiritual meditation, with pigments bleeding across the paper to evoke the fluid, interconnected nature of identity and the natural world.
Originally from Cuba and now based in Nashville, Campos-Pons draws on her Yoruba and Chinese ancestry to explore the links between nature, migration, and diasporic histories. The works are rich with symbolism; her subjects aren’t just plants, but historical witnesses to the transatlantic slave trade and markers of cultural continuity. Anchoring the show is Sugar/Bittersweet, a sculptural installation made of glass sugar disks and found spears, referencing the violence and legacy of the sugar trade.
On view until May 10, 2025, at Efie Gallery, Al Khayat Avenue.
Hazem Harb at Tabari Artspace: “Not There, Yet Felt”
Peeling #1, 2025
Handmade collage on plywood
72 × 47 1/5 in | 183 × 120 cm, Tabari Artspace, Artsy
In Not There, Yet Felt, Hazem Harb turns inward. Best known for his architectural collages and meditations on collective memory, this new body of work is deeply personal—anchored in his family home in Gaza. Peeling paint becomes metaphor and method, revealing emotional and historical layers embedded in the walls. Central to the show is Hope is Power, a flickering neon installation that pulses like a heartbeat. Around it, collages on wood—based on photographs of his Gaza home—uncover strata of lived life through soft pinks, blues, and burgundies. In another room, early mixed-media works from 2005 enter into quiet conversation with the present, highlighting a two-decade continuity of form, fragmentation, and diaspora.
Harb’s materials—neon, gauze, hessian—speak to both tenderness and trauma. Whether abstracting the figure or tracing memory through surface, his work offers a poetic reckoning with absence, longing, and the spaces that continue to shape us even from afar.
Elias Sime at Lawrie Shabibi: “Through the Window”
For his first solo exhibition in the Middle East, Elias Sime brings his intricate, material-rich practice to Lawrie Shabibi with Through the Window – በመስኮቱ ውስጥ. Born and based in Addis Ababa, Sime transforms colourful wires, circuit boards, and electronic detritus into expansive, layered compositions that hover between landscape and abstraction. The works recall everything from aerial maps to organic ecosystems, speaking to a deeply interconnected world shaped by technological flux. The title gestures to portals—architectural, digital, metaphorical—through which we view and understand our environment. Known for his inclusion in the Venice Biennale and his acclaimed Tightrope series, Sime’s work meditates on transformation, not just of materials but of perception. With each braided wire and sculpted motherboard, he reframes the relationship between humanity, innovation, and the planet. It’s an exhibition that hums with both urgency and serenity.
On view until May 2, 2025, at Lawrie Shabibi, Alserkal Avenue.