Dubai’s art calendar tends to reach full speed around Art Dubai, but some of the city’s most compelling exhibitions this month are happening beyond the fair itself. Across Nad Al Sheba and Al Quoz, a new wave of exhibitions is exploring memory, materiality, emotion, and the evolving role of objects in contemporary art.
Unfolding at Tashkeel
Opening on 15 May, Unfolding marks Emirati artist Moza Al Falasi’s first solo exhibition and the culmination of her journey through Tashkeel’s Critical Practice Programme.
On show till 26 June, the exhibition moves through photography, painting, sound, plaster, and fabric to examine grief, memory, and the emotional traces left behind by people and places. Rather than reconstructing a physical home, Moza approaches memory as something fragmented and unstable, appearing through textures, impressions, and fleeting sensory moments.
At the centre of the exhibition is the idea of inherited grief and the way personal and ancestral experiences become intertwined with identity. In her artist statement, Moza reflects on how the loss of her parents and husband reshaped her relationship with memory and absence, turning her practice into a way of navigating both personal and collective sorrow.
What makes Unfolding particularly striking is the way it resists neat conclusions. The works feel intentionally unresolved. Domestic spaces become fractured and emotionally charged, while recurring imagery such as women and olive trees point toward endurance rather than closure.
The exhibition also extends beyond the gallery walls through a collaboration with neighboring restaurant Gerbou, where chefs created a dessert inspired by the emotional landscape of the show. Balancing sweet and salty flavors, the piece draws from the tenderness of memory alongside the weight of grief.
Objects d’Art: “Beyond Function” at Hestia Gallery
Opening on 19 May during the first edition of the Al Khayat Art Seeding Festival, Objects d’Art: “Beyond Function” shifts the conversation toward collectible design, craftsmanship, and sculptural form.
The exhibition brings together works that sit somewhere between functional object and contemporary sculpture, focusing on material experimentation and surface-driven practice. Rather than approaching design through utility alone, the featured artists treat objects as emotional and artistic expressions in their own right.
Among the highlights is the work of French studio Studio Ombre d’Or, which explores crystallised enamel porcelain through unpredictable, highly textured surfaces shaped by controlled chemical reactions. Dubai-based ceramist Rawa Al Mahdawe presents sculptural ceramic works formed through an intuitive relationship with clay, while Irish ceramist Michael Rice introduces vividly coloured pieces that feel both playful and restrained.
The timing of the exhibition is particularly significant. It arrives as part of the wider Al Khayat Art Seeding Festival, a city-wide public programme transforming Al Khayat Avenue into a temporary creative district through murals, installations, talks, and site-specific interventions.
With artists from across the UAE, Oman, Portugal, Poland, Russia, and Indonesia participating, the festival reflects Dubai’s growing interest in art that exists beyond traditional gallery formats. Public space becomes part of the work itself, with installations unfolding directly within the urban landscape.
Together, these two exhibitions capture very different but equally important conversations happening across Dubai’s cultural scene right now. One looks inward, tracing memory and emotional inheritance through immersive installation. The other focuses on material, craftsmanship, and the evolving language of collectible design.
What connects them is a shared understanding that objects, spaces, and surfaces carry meaning far beyond what we initially see.
