By Your Summer 2025 Art Events Guide
Not an ideal time to step outdoors in the UAE, thanks to the record-breaking high temperatures. Instead head indoors to art galleries and theatres to enjoy your dose of music therapy, discover new artists and explore world cultures. Here’s a line-up of exhibitions, events and performances in the emirates we are excited about:
The Return to Essence
Artbooth Gallery, Abu Dhabi
Ongoing until July 13, 2025
Lebanese-Uruguayan painter Bruno Sfeir explores imagination, memory and abstraction through his solo exhibition – The Return to Essence. Flowing effortlessly between movement, influences and inner visions, Sfeir reimagines the Uruguayan countryside capturing idyllic scenes of cattle grazing and men on horseback. Traversing between reality and imagination, his compositions exist in a space of visual balance, evoking Sfeir’s adolescence and his memories of spending time in the countryside with his father, a prominent Uruguayan lawyer.
Tente’ par d’autres soleils
Tabari Artspace, Dubai
June to September 5, 2025
Tente’ par d’autres soleils (Tempted by other suns) is a new body of work by French-Tunisian artist, Bechir Bousaandel. The exhibition’s title draws from the words of French philosopher Claire Martin — like migratory birds, we are always tempted by other suns. This structural series in blown-glass centres around the figure of the gleaner, known in Tunisia as Berbasha — individuals who collect waste to survive. Birds cast in aluminium and copper are perched on the glass vessels representing migratory birds who like the gleaners are unbound by passports, documents or borders. This two-part solo exhibition was developed in collaboration with B7L9 Art Centre in Tunis and a supported by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation.
Jesse Cook Live and Jazziyat
Art for All, Zabeel Theatre, Dubai
June 13th and June 27, 2025
Acclaimed Canadian guitarist Jesse Cook, performs with his band at Zabeel Theatre on June 13 2025. With over two million records sold, 130 million YouTube views and over 650 million audio streams, Cook continues to enthrall audiences worldwide with his unique fusion of flamenco, jazz and world music. Born in France and raised between Canada and Europe, Cook’s music reflects a life shaped by constant movement and cultural crossover.
Jazziyat, Arabic classics revived through the language of Jazz, promises to be a captivating performance on June 27, 2025. Jazziyat offers a contemporary twist on the region’s musical heritage with headlining performance by Banah, Palestinian-Bahraini artist well known for her modern interpretation of classical Arabic music. The concert will blend timeless classics of legends, the likes of Umm Kulthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Abdel Wahab and Asmahan.
Seas are sweet, Fish Tears are Salty
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
June 25, 2025 to January 4, 2026
The first institutional solo exhibition of Saudi artist Mohammad Alfaraj opens on June 25, 2025 at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. The exhibition brings together installations, photography, video works and site specific commissions, curated as per the garden and outdoor spaces of the centre. Taking cues from his life in his native region of Al Ahsa, an agricultural oasis, the exhibition weaves together cultural stories, characters and motifs through the artist’s poetry and photography practice. A newly commissioned storytelling space, The Nest, attempts to involve the audience to gather, read and participate in communal life.
Everyman’s Mountain
Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai
Ongoing till September 12, 2025
Emirati artist and designer Omar Al Gurg showcases a series of photograph at this solo exhibition documenting Mount Kilimanjaro’s diverse ecology. This exhibition marks the beginning of Al Gurg’s ongoing project to record Kilimanjaro’s evolving landscape capturing its quiet individuality, vulnerability and resilience. The photographs were clicked during a six day journey that Al Gurg embarked on in 2021. Raised in a family of photographers, Al Gurg’s camerawork is a meditative practice, marked by a deliberate focus on detail and atmosphere.
I put my Brain on Pause
Firetti Contemporary, Dubai
June 20 to August 20, 2025
Lebanese artist Ihab Ahmad along with Firetti Contemporary gallery and Lamborghini, Dubai collaborated to transform a Lamborghini with the artist’s signature vibrant playful motifs. This artistic intervention marks a daring intersection between contemporary art and iconic automotive design. The exhibition will also present a new body of Ihab’s work — with smiling faces, symbolic of human connections, joy and emotions. The artist has used oil on linen and spray paint, choosing emotion over perfection, instinct over intellect.
Layered Medium: We are in Open Circuits
Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi
Ongoing until June 30, 2025
Contemporary art from Korea, 1960s to today is a ground-breaking exhibition showcasing the evolution of Korea’s avant garde contemporary art scenario. The historic exhibition is a collaboration between Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF) and the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) bringing to the GCC region, for the first time, a large showcase of contemporary Korean art. Curated by SeMA’s Kyung-hwan Yeo and curator Maya El Khalil, the exhibition presents works by 29 Korean artists inviting audience to explore how media shapes perception, memory and connection. Also on the anvil will be a public programme with panel talks, films screenings and performances.
Antevasin – The One Who Sits at the Border of Two Worlds
Gallery Isabelle, Dubai
June 15 to September 10, 2025
Richi Bhatia is a multi-disciplinary Indian artist based in the UAE. In this series, the artist delves into the shifting realms between life-worlds and death-worlds showcasing how beauty and obscenity often co-exist. She grounds much of her practice in fish and meat markets, engaging with the lives of human and animals, representing composition and decomposition, human and non-human, India and UAE – showing these borders not as lines of separations but spaces of reflection and radical possibility.