Currently, various art spaces across the region are hosting a mix of exhibitions which offer insight into the diversity of art practices. This month, we focus solely on shows taking place in the UAE that explore a full range of themes, including memory, identity, resilience, and transformation. Here is our list of the top 10 notable exhibitions on view in August 2025:
1. Tempted By Other Suns by Béchir Boussandel
At Tabari Artspace, Franco‑Tunisian artist Béchir Boussandel presents Tenté par d’autres soleils (Tempted By Other Suns) through 5 September 2025. Marking a departure from his traditional canvas-based work, the exhibition features a new series of blown-glass artworks. The series revolves around the figure of the gleaner (a person who survives by collecting discarded materials).
2. A Memorial in Fragments
Until 13 August 2025, Gulf Photo Plus is hosting A Memorial in Fragments, a poignant tribute to Palestinian photographer Majd Arandas, who lost his life in central Gaza in 2023. Displaying images recovered by his brother, the show invites visitors to reflect on the political and emotional afterlife of photographs: not merely as documents of the present, but as enduring testimonies of lives lived and lost.
3. Summer Collective: Wavering Hope
Ayyam Gallery celebrates its 20th anniversary with Wavering Hope, a summer collective exhibition that reflects on Syria’s story of conflict, exile, resilience, and renewal. Running through 5 September 2025, the show features thirteen artists, including Yasmine Al Awa, Tammam Azzam, and Safwan Dahoul, whose works navigate memory, trauma, and the persistent glimmer of renewal.
4. It Starts Where It Ends by Ana Escobar Saavedra
On display until 7 September 2025, this exhibition at 421 Arts Campus showcases Colombian artist Ana Escobar Saavedra’s works, which meditate on identity while navigating the tensions between permanence and impermanence, presence and absence. The exhibited art pieces also examine the relationship between the individual and institutions, transforming official documents into artefacts that question the permanence of identification systems.
5. Unstable Grounds: NYUAD MFA Graduate Exhibition 2025
While at 421 Arts Campus, you can also visit Unstable Grounds, an exhibition which showcases the thesis projects of eight graduating MFA students from New York University Abu Dhabi. The show delves into themes of migration, ecology, memory, and human connection through experimental and interdisciplinary practices. It will be open to the public until 7 September 2025.
6. To Know Malaysia is to Love Malaysia: Highlights from The AFK Collection
On view at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, this exhibition presents a survey of Malaysian contemporary art. The displayed works are drawn from the AFK Collection, one of the most extensive archives of Malaysian art from the 1980s to today. The show, through 10 September 2025, traces the evolution of a distinctive artistic language shaped by independence, cultural hybridity, and global dialogue.
7. Antevasin – the one who sits at the border of two worlds
This multidisciplinary solo exhibition by Indian artist Richi Bhatia moves between drawing, performance, assemblage, and food-based interventions. It examines liminality and fluidity, disrupting rigid binaries and exploring relational ecologies across the human and nonhuman realms. The exhibition is taking place at Gallery Isabelle until 10 September 2025.
8. Tajammul Group Exhibition
XVA Gallery is holding Tajammul, an exhibition that brings together sixteen artists whose works reflect the evolving aesthetics and concerns of contemporary Middle Eastern art. Participating creatives include Imran Channa (Pakistan), Debjani Bhardwaj (India), Behdad Lahooti (Iran), and Oussama Garti (Morocco), among others. The show will run through 11 September 2025.
9. I Paint Your Grace, I Paint Your Pain, I Paint Love
Meanwhile, Leila Heller Gallery is home to I Paint Your Grace, I Paint Your Pain, I Paint Love, a solo exhibition by Persian-American artist Reza Derakshani. On view until 15 September 2025, it features never-before-seen artworks that delve into themes of memory, identity, and transformation.
10. The Gulf Through Time: Dariush Zandi’s Photographic Journey
At Total Arts at the Courtyard, this exhibition presents a four-decade photographic archive by architect, photographer, and former town planner Dariush Zandi. The collection captures the evolving landscapes and communities of the UAE and Oman. From black and white early cityscapes to vibrant desert scenes and portraits, Zandi’s work explores the layered history and evolving identity of the Gulf.
In addition, you might be interested in visiting Between Metamorphosis and Reality by Maitha Abdalla, Between Sunrise and Sunset by Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, and Abstract Art Exhibition: Abstract Visions, Infinite Interpretations.
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