Top Spots Dubai shares Dubai’s top exhibition openings and cultural events for the month of April 2023.
Alserkal Avenue, Ramadan Programming
1 – 9 April, 7.30 pm onwards
Alserkal celebrates the diversity of Dubai with special Ramadan programming. Visitors are invited to stay from iftar until suhoor and celebrate cultural stories through a storytelling series with Shereen Saif, live music, workshops, poetry performances, slow art walks and more.
Visit alserkal.online to discover Alserkal’s full Ramadan programming.
Jameel Arts Centre, Al Jaddaf Waterfront Ramadan Nights
1 April and 8 April, 9pm – midnight
Jameel Arts Centre’s Ramadan Nights programming centres around two special night events designed to suit guests of all ages held on Saturdays April 1 and 8 between 9 pm till midnight. Guests can explore exhibitions, watch short films and discover the centre’s outdoor library space. There are also board games and workshops for adults and children led by local creatives. Dining is available at the centre’s farm-to-fork restaurant, Teible.
Perrotin, DIFC
XXI, Jeremy Demester Solo
Until 8 April
Perrotin presents the first solo exhibition of the French-Beninese artist, Jeremy Demester, in Dubai. Demester draws influence from archaeology, mythologies, global popular culture and his own Gypsy origins. The artist attempts to reveal the traces of forgotten myths in modern day society through his works on canvas. Demester is best known for his paintings of skies and trees, two simple subjects drawn from nature, that demonstrate the power of metamorphosis.
Firetti Contemporary, Alserkal Avenue
Wood You Rather By Happy?, Jason Middlebrook and Wolfgang Stiller
Until 25 April
This dual exhibition of sculptural works by Jason Middlebrook and Wolfgang Stiller sees the artists engage with the internal and external worlds. Works on display include Stiller’s Matchstickmen series of wooden sculptures of matchsticks with burnt heads. The works have been interpreted as a representation of burnout syndrome. Jason Middlebrook’s wall sculptures are also on view. Middlebrook’s abstract forms on cut and carved tree trunks reflect the artist’s relationship with nature.
Efie Gallery, Al Quoz
Beyond the Fence Begins the Sky, Isshaq Ismail Solo
Until 29 May
Ghanaian painter Isshaq Ismail’s solo exhibition, Beyond the Fence, Begins the Sky, explores ideas of transcendence and universality that unfold from the African context. Works by the artist were produced during his residency with the gallery. This latest series sees the artist explore notions of repetition and beauty. Figures in various shades of blue exhibit ambivalent moods against utopian backdrops that heighten a sense of the adversities they might face.
Tabari Artspace, DIFC
Seham, Almaha Jaralla
27 April until 1 September
Tabari Artspace presents Seham, the solo exhibition of emerging Emirati artist, Almaha Jaralla. For her first solo exhibition at Tabari Artspace, Almaha Jaralla invites the audience to join her on a journey through Abu Dhabi’s constructed and social worlds from the 1980s until the present day. Jaralla has produced a series of mixed media works on canvas that depart from the artist’s own archival family portraits taken in Abu Dhabi during the 1980s. The artist understands these intimate portraits as a window into the essence of the city during a period of rapid social and physical transformation in the Gulf.
Green Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue
A Line of Foreign Verses, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan and Seher Shah
Until 29 April
Hera Büyüktasciyan (Istanbul) and Seher Shah (Karachi) draw together cultural and political histories through works on paper and film. The exhibition stimulates reflection on notions of home, and belonging, as well as the erasure and rewriting of cultural heritage shaped by social and political ruptures.
Ayyam Gallery, Alserkal Avenue
The Houses Behind the Army Canal, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji
Until May 1
The Houses Behind the Army Canal is the solo exhibition of Iraqi artist, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji. This multi-media show is the second in a series of three exhibitions that trace the three generations of migration within the artist’s family. The first focused on the artist’s grandfather’s life while this latest installment foregrounds the migration of the artist’s father to Baghdad amid the political turmoil and subsequent poverty faced by the family in 1958.
