In addition to the monthly list, I will add “What’s On?!” a link to most active initiatives, hubs and museums across the Middle East & the world such as V&A, MoMA, ArtintheCity, AlSerkal Avenue, Ashkal Alwan and more! The list keeps updating throughout the month, so keep passing by to stay in touch with the latest! To check ongoing exhibitions from March, click here. If you have a non-profit or commercial gallery and like to be featured in upcoming lists, drop us an email.

What’s On?!

Alhondiga Cultural & Art Center: Eight masterpieces by Luchino Visconti

Alserkal Avenue: STEP CONFERENCE

ArtintheCity: ISLAMOPOLITAN OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Ashkal Alwan: ANIMISM – CURATED BY ANSELM FRANKE

Bayt Lothan: Classes | Exhibitions | Workshops

CAP Kuwait: The Hidden Light of Objects

DUCTAC: Luma – Art in Film

Guggenheim (NYC): Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video

Guggenheim (Bilbao – Spain): Ernesto Neto: The Body that Carries Me

Guggenheim (Venice): Themes & Variations: The Empire Of Light

Maraya Art Center: Encounter: Listening to the City

MoMA: Gauguin: Metamorphoses

Tate:  Richard Hamilton

TheJamJar: Paper Animation Workshop

Sharjah Art Foundation: Susan Hefuna: Another Place

V&A: William Kent Designing Georgian Britain

Whitney Museum: American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe

 

The Third Line, Dubai

 

 

 

 

Green Art Gallery, Dubai

 

 

Occasion: Green Art Gallery is participating in ART BRUSSELS. Booth 3B – 17. Featuring: Nazgol Ansarinia, Kamrooz Aram, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Zsolt Bodoni and Seher Shah.

Duration: 25 – 27 April 2014

Location: ART BRUSSELS.

 

Ayyam Gallery

Jeddah: Mohammad Bozorgi Symphonic Meditations

 

Occasion: Ayyam Gallery Jeddah is pleased to invite you to the opening reception of ‘Symphonic Meditations’, Mohammad Bozorgi’s first solo exhibition in Saudi Arabia. In his latest paintings, Bozorgi utilizes a meditative process of repetition that grows into an optical expanse of depth and volume across the surface of the canvas. The artist’s painstakingly executed compositions teem with energy as Arabic or Farsi text explodes outward into a rhythmic infinity. Opening Reception: Tuesday, 1 April from 7-9PM. Duration: 1 April – 15 May Location:  AYYAM GALLERY, JEDDAH.

VC ART

‘SYRIAN ART: of Today’

Occasion: Group show in aid of Oxfam to support Syrian refugees. Featured artists: Fadi Al Hamwi, Tarek Butayhi, Mohamad Khayata, Thaer Maarouf & Ashraf Raheb. Live Performance by Jenny Bae: April 3rd, 2014 at 6PM. Opening Reception: April 1st, 2014 from 6PM – 9PM. Duration: April 2nd – 5th, 2014 Location: VC Art, London.

Ayyam Gallery

Beirut: Ginane Makki Bacho & Fathallah Zamroud Material Remains

Occasion: Ayyam Gallery Beirut is pleased to announce Material Remains, a joint exhibition of veteran painter and sculptor, Ginane Makki Bacho alongside newcomer Fathallah Zamroud. Featuring a twelve-part steel architectural installation amidst modern Impressionist style canvases, Material Remains displays each artist’s unique engagement with the brutal reality of war and their individual response to its aftermath. In Zamroud’s canvases, the thick and gestural application of paint gives way to a landscape representing the misery of Syrian refugee camps. For Makki Bacho, her installation takes as its focal point the iconic Burj El Murr, a concrete tower in downtown Beirut designed to be a state of the art trade centre, whose fate was to be a stronghold for sniper and militiamen during the civil wars. Opening Reception: April 3rd, 2014 from 6PM – 9PM. Duration: 3 April – May 31, 2014 Location: Ayyam Gallery. Beirut.

Art Circle

Fatima Kawtharani’s Red Sunflowers

Occasion: Art Circle gallery cordially invites you to Red Sunflowers by FATIMA KAWTHARANI. Kawtharani’s work presents strong semiotics related to motherhood, childhood and the growing life, reccuring themes in Kawtharani’s practice. Elements of nature often characterize her paintings, as they are directly a reference to the topics she tackles. The sunflowers, the fish, the sky, water are a few of the elements reminescent of life and its evolution. Kawtharani brings to her paintings another dimension by sewing directly on the canvas. The colorful threads blend with the paint and highlight the depicted elements. The integration of fabric and embroidery has become the artist’s signature technique. Opening Reception: Thursday April 3 starting 7 pm. Duration: April 3 – May 3, 2014 Location: Art Circle. Beirut.

Dar Al Funoon

Reza Derakshani

Occasion: Dar Al Funoon cordially invites you to an exhibition of works by Reza Derakshani. Derakshani, who now lives between Dubai and Austin, Texas, is not only a painter, but also a vocalist, an instrumentalist, a composer and a performer. His works are featured in major private and public collections around the world and most recently, were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 7th from 7 – 9 PM. Duration: April 7 – 21, 2014 Location: Dar Al Funoon, Kuwait.

 Contemporary Art Platform

Mohammed Al Kouh’s Tomorrow’s Past

 

Occasion: My First Solo show / 30 Days 3 artists, is a project presenting young emerging Kuwaiti artists for their first solo exhibition at The Art Room gallery, one of Contemporary Art Platform’s exhibition spaces. This project gives an opportunity for 3 young artists every year to show their work for 10 days within a reflective artistic community supported by CAP Kuwait. The first artist in this project is Mohammed Al Kouh who uses an original approach towards taking his audience back to the time when stories were passed on between generations through hand colored black and white photographs. The exhibition titled “Tomorrow’s Past” serves as a catalyst to experiencing a specific Kuwaiti nostalgia to a past where this place was known as the pearl of the Gulf. Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 9th from 7 – 9 PM. Duration: April 10 – 19, 2014 Location: CAP Kuwait

Zara Gallery

Shereen Audi’s Born free

Occasion: Under the patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Wijdan Ali, Shereen Audi’s new exhibition ‘Born free’ opens at the Zara Gallery Hyatt Amman on 9th April 2014. The exhibition is supported by QØDE ARTISTS AGENCY. Shereen Audi’s latest exhibition contorts angel’s wings, and sky-blue fairy tale colours into a narrative about the nature of modern freedom, the chains of control, and a world in which everyone can fly, but there is nowhere to escape to. Inspired by Jean-Jacques’s Rosseau’s reflection in a ‘Social Contract’, the work represents a sweetly poised brand of sedition; a comment on the faux world of comfort we have created, the fears and anxieties it has born, and the dreams we foster to keep us safe as children, surrounded by neatly plucked balloons. Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 9at 6:00pm. Duration: April 9 – 28, 2014 Location: Zara Gallery, Amman (Jordan).

Alexander Gray Associates

Heidi Bucher

 

Occasion: Alexander Gray Associates presents its inaugural exhibition of Heidi Bucher, featuring emblematic works from the 1980s and 1990s. Bucher (b.1926, Winterthur, Switzerland – d.1993, Brunnen, Switzerland) maintained an important, but overlooked practice dedicated to the exploration of materiality, space, and the body. The exhibition focuses on Bucher’s “skinnings,” the works for which the artist is most well-known. Studies of personal, cultural, and collective memory and experience, the “skinnings” examine architectural elements of historically and personally significant buildings. Having studied fashion, Bucher began her career creating body wrappings, body shells, and latex casts of clothing, exploring clothes as second skins that hid women both physically and psychologically. Bucher’s move towards architectural imprints, which began after returning to Switzerland from Los Angeles in the early 1970s, was an extension of her earlier clothes-based works and her investigation of the body in space. Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 9, 2014, 6:00 – 8:00 pm  Duration: April 9 – May 18, 2014 Location: Alexander Gray Associates, New York