Autumn 2026

Art Jameel, an organisation that supports artists and creative communities, presents ten exhibitions and commissions across Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and Hayy Jameel in Jeddah, bringing together more than 65 artists and collectives across 20 geographies, spanning West, South and East Asia, the Gulf, the Red Sea and East Africa. Moving between painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, archival material, sound and living ecologies, the programme ranges from solo presentations and Art Jameel Collection-led exhibitions to expansive group shows and a new long-term garden commission. 

Upcoming at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai

Artists’ Rooms: Lulua Alyahya, Walid Siti, and Shezad Dawood
September 20, 2026–January 31, 2027

Drawn largely from the Art Jameel Collection, ‘Artists’ Rooms’ is a series of solo exhibitions by influential, innovative artists, with a particular focus on practitioners from West and South Asia. Lulua Alyahya’s first UAE solo exhibition explores Gulf masculinity and its cultural archetypes through intimate, gestural paintings that move between tenderness and humour, memory, imagination and lived experience. Spanning 40 years of practice, Iraqi Kurdistan-born artist Walid Siti’s presentation includes a new large-scale sculpture Registry of the Lived alongside his 1980s War Series, created in exile during the Iran-Iraq War. Shezad Dawood’s presentation centres on New Dream Machine Project, a three-metre rotating light sculpture reimagining Brion Gysin’s Dreamachine. Originally commissioned for the 2011 Abraaj Group Art Prize, the work links Sufi cosmology with the Beat Generation’s experiments in consciousness. 

Salah Elmur: Just as the Heart of a Mango is a Stone
November 1, 2026–March 14, 2027

This major solo exhibition brings together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera, presenting 60-year-old Sudanese artist Salah Elmur's post-2018 works, drawing on his upbringing near the Blue Nile and his family's Studio Kamal in Khartoum. Elmur explores Sudan, displacement and belonging through memory, myth, and the doubling of the self through reflection and refraction.

Artist's Garden: Amphibious Timelapse by the Rice Brewing Sisters Club
November 7, 2026–September 27, 2028

South Korean collective the Rice Brewing Sisters Club explores "social fermentation" across visual art, performance, oral history and ecological thinking. Over two years, the commission unfolds as a garden, a lab and a kitchen, tracing a continuum between land and sea, developed with researchers in saline and arid agriculture.

Artist's Room: Bani Abidi
November 13, 2026–April 25, 2027

This Artist's Room features Trembling hands (2024), a series of portraits of prominent individuals who chose to oppose the genocide in Gaza through public speeches in Europe and beyond, highlighting the tension and bravery inherent in taking a public position in such circumstances.

Currently on view

Global Positioning System
Jameel Arts Centre Dubai, and Hayy Jameel, Jeddah
On view through October 4, 2026

A two-part exhibition exploring mapping and navigation systems, movement, infrastructure, contested topographies and landscapes in transformation. 

Artist’s Room: Kamruzzaman Shadhin
On view through November 1, 2026

In this large textile artwork, handcrafted threads trace the water colors of Bengal's Teesta and Brahmaputra rivers. Engraved brass disks share the memories and migration stories of two women, the artist's mother and local jute weaver Johura Begum, whose lives were shaped by the rivers and the 1947 partition of Bengal.

Upcoming at Hayy Jameel, Jeddah

Made with your Magic
November 25, 2026–April 12, 2027

Curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh, this exhibition is an ambitious, multi-country curatorial project that looks beyond the maqâms' sonic forms. Maqâms have endured through political shifts, cycles of exclusion and persecution, wars and the collapse of empires. Reflecting this rich artistic and cultural diversity, the exhibition brings together more than 20 artists, including Ahmed Ghossein, Ala Younis, Alla Abdunabi, Bady Dalloul, Noor Abouarafeh, Saif Fardj, Sonia Kallel, Walid Raad, among others.

Currently on view

Red Wind, Coral Worlds
Through October 26, 2026

Art Jameel’s Curatorial Open Call exhibition, by Huda Tayob and Miriam Hillawi Abraham, situates the Red Sea within an interconnected oceanic terrain through film, photography, sculpture and archival material.

For more information, email press@artjameel.org.