August may be one of the quieter months on the Gulf’s cultural calendar, but galleries and art institutions across the region continue to offer a full range of exhibitions. From experimental printmaking to photography and contemporary interpretations of regional heritage, the month’s programme brings together artists exploring memory, identity, transformation, belonging, and the ways we respond to the world around us. Here is our top 10 exhibitions worth adding to your cultural itinerary in August 2026.
1. XVA Gallery: Oblivion
XVA Gallery Dubai presents Oblivion, a collective exhibition that examines forgetting not simply as an absence of memory, but as a process capable of opening space for transformation. Through a diverse selection of works created by 18 artists, the show considers what happens when familiar objects, images, and ideas are released from their original contexts and allowed to acquire new meanings. One can visit the exhibition until 15 August 2026.
2. Before the Silence Breaks by Philip Ducap
Before the Silence Breaks is a solo show by French photographer Philip Ducap taking place at the Bassam Freiha Art Foundation (BFAF) until 30 August 2026. The show displays Ducap’s eponymous photographic series centred on the sea. On view in the Foundation’s Annex Gallery, the exhibition considers the ocean as both a physical landscape and a metaphor for continuous transformation. Ducap, who works across portraiture and documentary photography, reflects on the scale and instability of the natural world, placing human experience within a much larger and continually changing environment.
3. Khali Balak Men RISO
This group show, running at Tashkeel until 21 August 2026, is dedicated to the experimental possibilities of risograph printing. Curated by Ibrahim Zaki, the exhibition brings together 11 Emirati artists and designers who have engaged with the medium through workshops, personal practice, and collaborations. Visitors are welcome to admire works by such creatives as Aysha Saif Al Hemrani Al Shamsi, Dina Saadi, and Mariam Abbas, among others. The exhibition highlights the distinctive qualities of risograph printing, from visible grain and imperfect registration to vibrant layers of colour, while presenting the medium as a space for experimentation, exchange, and play.
4. Same Air
Organised by Tabari Artspace, Same Air features 14 artists connected to the Gulf in response to a shared moment of disruption. Rather than imposing a predetermined theme or formal directive, the exhibition developed from artists responding instinctively to their surroundings. Painting, installation, drawing, and mixed media become vehicles for processing contemporary experiences, resulting in a show shaped by emotional, social, and political atmospheres. Open until 1 September 2026, the exhibition serves as a living record of a particular moment in the region and the ways artists respond to it.
5. In Transit
Until 31 August 2026, Artbooth Gallery is holding In Transit, an exhibition that brings together seven artists — Wadeei Khaled, Ahmad El Badawi, Bahram Hajou, Hanibal Srouji, Jamal Bassiouni, Rania Amoudi, and Yervant Hawarian — those who will appear in upcoming exhibitions at the gallery with those whose work has previously been presented there. The show reflects a curatorial intention to trace evolving artistic narratives while highlighting recurring themes of memory, identity, displacement, and visual perception.
6. Collage Art Exhibition
This expansive exhibition at Kutubna Cultural Center approaches collage as a contemporary medium for exploring memory, migration, identity, and belonging. Curated by Nora Qudah, the show displays more than 70 works by artists from 26 countries; these encompass traditional paper art pieces as well as textile interventions, video, and digital compositions. By bringing together such varied approaches to collage, the exhibition demonstrates how layering, fragmentation, and juxtaposition can become powerful tools for storytelling. The last day of the show is 31 August 2026.
7. CARBON 12: The Two Walks
The Two Walks at CARBON 12 brings together artworks on paper selected by curator Judy Karkour. The exhibition explores the possibilities of paper as a medium capable of challenging conventional ideas about scale and artistic presence. Fourteen artists, including names such as Solimar Miller, Nour Malas, Faris Alshafar, and Amba Sayal-Bennett, among others, work with the material in different ways and extend it beyond its traditional associations with drawing and printmaking. The resulting presentation demonstrates how a seemingly modest material can support an expansive range of artistic approaches. The show will end on 5 September 2026.
8. Floating by Aaron Johnson
Meanwhile, at Volery Gallery, American artist Aaron Johnson presents Floating, a solo exhibition of paintings that inhabit the space between figuration and abstraction. Running through 5 September 2026, the exhibition showcases a new series of luminous works that depict mysterious, ethereal figures emerging from hazy fields of pigment. In this series, the artist deepens his investigation into movement, energy, nature, and transformation.
9. Under The Ghaf Tree. Where Everything Belongs by Fatma Lootah
At RARARES Gallery in Dubai, Emirati artist Fatma Lootah presents Under the Ghaf Tree. Where Everything Belongs, a selection of paintings from her 2019 Ghaf Tree series. The exhibition reflects on land, memory, and belonging through the natural and cultural landscape of the UAE. The ghaf tree, the country’s national tree, emerges from blurred desert landscapes as an image of resilience and continuity. Lootah also incorporates representations of Emirati women, connecting ideas of place, identity, and collective memory. The show will end on 10 September 2026.
10. Unflowered by Ghalia Kalaji
This exhibition at the Khawla Art Gallery displays mixed-media works by Syrian artist and printmaker Ghalia Kalaji. It revolves around ideas of vulnerability, restraint, and transformation. Employing layered textures and deliberately understated compositions, Kalaji explores states of incompleteness and withheld expression. Unflowered does not treat incompleteness as an endpoint: it approaches it as a transitional state, one in which new forms and possibilities can gradually emerge. The exhibition will be open to the public until 31 August 2026.
If you’re looking for more exhibitions to add to your August itinerary, The UAE is Beautiful, a photo exhibition, and Interwoven at House of Arts in Expo City Dubai are also worth a visit.
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