5 SHOWS is the new Artissima twice-monthly feature that recommends 5 exhibitions not to be missed in various geographical areas and cities around the world, chosen from the viewpoint of curators and directors of important institutions who live and work in these contexts. A different way to find guidance in the discovery of global contemporary art, from a personal and always up-to-date perspective.
The first focus is on the United Arab Emirates, with a selection by Antonia Carver, artistic director of Art Jameel in Dubai.
Here are the 5 exhibitions currently on display that she has chosen for our readers:
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: The Bouquet and the Wreath
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
Up to 8.03.2026
The Bouquet and the Wreath is Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s first large-scale survey exhibition. It takes place at Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, bringing together artworks created over the past 45 years, as well as ambitious new commissions.
Flowers, beds, and words recur throughout the exhibition, reflecting the artist’s enduring preoccupations with desire and mortality, difference and curiosity.
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Ala Younis: Past of a Temporal Universe
NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi
Up to 18.01.2026
This exhibition spans the last two decades of Ala Younis’ hybrid practice as an artist-researcher-curator. Her archival installations, textiles, murals, mosaics, and drawings make subtle, startling connections among political, social, urban, and popular imaginaries. Informed by her training in architecture and visual cultures, Younis’ projects center on the physical developments and narrative intersections of the Arab geographies in which she grew up, frequently drawing from a wide range of formal and informal archives. The exhibition will debut a series of new commissions alongside iterations of major past projects.
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Rays, Ripples, Residue
421, Abu Dhabi
Up to 26.04.2026
Rays, Ripples, Residue explores the lasting impressions, afterimages, and the material residues that have shaped exhibition-making and artistic production in the UAE over the past decade. Since 2015, the local art scene has evolved into a dynamic ecosystem, marked by the rise of artist-led initiatives, expanded institutional support, and growing international visibility through biennales, art fairs, and cultural diplomacy. This period has also witnessed deeper engagement with regional histories, identity, and decolonial narratives, reflected across both institutional and independent platforms.
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The importance of staying quiet. 2. Lala Rukh II
Grey Noise, Dubai
Up to 17.01.2026
In 2014, The importance of staying quiet was exhibited in Hong Kong as an attempt to acknowledge a minimal vocabulary within Pakistani art. Conceived by Saira Ansari and Umer Butt, the presentation brought together works spanning six decades, between the 1950s and 2010s, and included Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928–1985), Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941–1999), Lala Rukh (1948–2017), Rashid Rana (b. 1968), Hamra Abbas (b. 1976), Sara Salman (b. 1978), Ali Kazim (b. 1979), Ayesha Jatoi (b. 1979), Fahd Burki (b. 1981), and Iqra Tanveer (b. 1983).
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OPEN INVITATION
Satellite, Dubai
Up to 31.01.2026
This January, artist-curator Rami Farook opens his long-running studio-gallery Satellite to OPEN INVITATION, an evolving exhibition that challenges the quiet gatekeeping of the art world by removing selection criteria altogether.
The project invites artists across disciplines to participate without applications, fees, or institutional filters. With 109 floor and wall positions available—each limited to one square meter or cubic meter—the exhibition becomes a shared spatial agreement rather than a curated hierarchy. What emerges is a dense, living landscape of practices: works that may be resolved or uncertain, celebrated or rarely seen, confident or tentative.
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