Art Week in Dubai used to orbit around the annual Art Dubai fair, but now the whole city’s in on the action. While the three-day-long fair still anchors the calendar, the real magic happens outside the exhibition halls of Madinat Jumeirah: from secret dinners hosted by Art Dubai to after-hours pop-ups, collabs, and one-night-only shows, the week has officially turned into a non-stop creative party. Hotels, private homes, desert dunes — nothing’s off-limits, and every corner of the city is engaged.
‘Le Miroir’ presented by ICD Brookfield Place Arts Programme
New York-based performance artist Miles Greenberg made his UAE debut with Le Miroir, staging emotional archaeology at ICD Brookfield Place through a multi-channel film and durational performance commissioned by the ICD Brookfield Place Arts Programme. Building on its first act staged at the 2025 edition of 1-54 Marrakech inside the historic El Badi Palace, the second iteration was filmed against the stark landscapes of the UAE desert. Premiering at ICD Brookfield Place during Art Week with a live one-time performance, Le Miroir pulled viewers into Greenberg’s world of emotional archaeology — a meditation on movement, endurance, and the fragile boundary between violence and tenderness.
Inspired by Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, the work strips away language to investigate how emotions mutate through repeated physical gestures over time. In a city where performance art is still carving out its space, Greenberg’s raw, minimalist staging offers a potent new vocabulary for Dubai’s cultural evolution. Commissioned by ICD Brookfield Place Arts and curated by Malak Abu Qaoud, Le Miroir signals a growing appetite for deeper, slower, and more confrontational forms of art in the region — Le Miroir was the stand out moment of Art Week.
Thomas Lélu Presents ‘Calm Down It’s Just Art’ Exhibition at W Dubai – Mina Seyahi
French artist, author, and digital provocateur Thomas Lélu brought his irreverent energy to Dubai this April with Calm Down It’s Just Art, a bold pop-up exhibition hosted at W Dubai – Mina Seyahi. Guests encountered three of Lélu’s signature text-based paintings installed in the hotel’s lobby— deceptively simple phrases that blur the lines between message and image. Channeling the spirit of post-Dada absurdity and punk rebellion, his works push viewers to question the seriousness we attach to art itself, while tapping into the viral, meme-driven culture that has seen his slogans embraced by icons like Snoop Dogg and Diane Keaton.
Rooted in the DIY poetics of the Beat Generation but reframed for the digital age, Lélu’s art feels both raw and strangely universal— with orthographic “errors” and hand-drawn simplicity becoming part of his visual language. In addition to the exhibition, a limited series of tote bags and note cards created in collaboration with W Hotels globally launched at the property, extending his playful aesthetic into everyday life.
Piaget at Art Dubai ‘Play of Shapes Exhibition’
Another standout collaboration at Art Dubai 2025 came from Piaget. The brand worked with Kuwaiti artist Alymamah Rashed on a bespoke commission titled Your Love Moves Around My Trapeze Sun (Will You Hold Our Glistening Light?). Known for her surrealist compositions and fluid dreamscapes, Rashed reimagined Piaget’s Play of Shapes universe through her signature lens — translating the Maison’s bold creativity into a poetic conversation between light, movement, and craftsmanship. Inspired by the trapeze-shaped dial of Piaget’s new Sixtie Jewellery Watch Collection, her work transformed the timepiece into a radiant golden sun, evoking rhythm, fluidity, and timeless brilliance.
While Piaget also unveiled extraordinary new creations— including the retro-futuristic Sixtie watches and a tribute to Andy Warhol’s beloved Black Tie model— it was this unexpected collision between fine watchmaking and contemporary Arab art that captured the spirit of the week. Through Rashed’s golden celestial figures and painterly gestures, Piaget’s codes of lightness and audacity took on an entirely new, luminous life.
Soho House and TAEX present Celebrate Art and Innovation
Soho House Cities Without Houses Dubai brought together an intimate community of creatives for a standout evening during Art Week, hosted at the private home of architect and art collector Ali Mohammadioun. The night marked the UAE premiere of Marina Abramović Element (MAE)— a groundbreaking digital art project by the legendary performance artist in collaboration with TAEX and displayed by MCube. Guests experienced the unveiling of Art, the first chapter of the project, an NFT drop that reimagines Abramović’s most iconic works through symbolic digital forms and time-based cycles.
Blending ritual, memory, and emerging technology, the event captured Abramović’s enduring exploration of endurance and transformation in a new medium. Against the backdrop of one of the art world’s busiest weeks, the evening stood out as a rare, thoughtful pause— underscoring Soho House’s commitment to fostering creative dialogue, supporting next-generation platforms, and celebrating the evolving intersections between art and technology.
Dear Self by Mays Al Moosawi by Emergeast
Rising Omani artist Mays Al Moosawi offered one of the most intimate moments of Dubai Art Week with Dear Self, You’ve witnessed women at war to be themselves, Love Mays. Hosted for one night only in a private residence, the exhibition blurred the lines between studio and showcase, inviting viewers into a raw, unfiltered space filled with paintings, sketches, and personal artifacts. Recreating the atmosphere of her working studio, Mays opened a window into her ongoing journey of self-discovery, touching on themes of love, legacy, discomfort, and the complex beauty of relationships through layered materials like thread, fabric, and spray paint.
Presented by Emergeast, the show captured a new energy in the region’s art scene— where storytelling and vulnerability take center stage. Following transformative residencies in Leipzig and London, Mays’s new body of work reflected a powerful evolution of voice and technique. With Dear Self, she reaffirmed herself as a rising voice for authenticity, using her art to explore the emotional landscapes many navigate but few articulate so fearlessly.
