Discovering yourself through faces, land and snakes: Where to be this weekend in the Middle East

The question of finding ourselves is constantly on our minds, whether we're 14, 17, 24 or other ages I have yet to turn (but something tells me it's forever). This week, our artists pick at what makes us us, whether it's our hometowns, homelands, interests, bodies or faces. The best part is that you get to write your own synthesis.

Every Thursday, L’Orient Today, in partnership with The MYM Agenda, guides you through happenings across the Middle East that are actually worth your time.

We carry the land where we've grown up in ways we don't even realize. In her fourth solo show, "Between Dust and Dawn" at Janine Rubeiz Gallery in Raouche, painter Ghada Zoghbi uses the earth itself as a medium, painting using charcoal to explore her (and our) connection to Lebanon's land, one that has existed long before the country even became a state.

You'd be surprised how emotional and intimate paintings of rocks can be.

For more information, click here.

This Saturday, Yara Lapidus takes Metro al-Madina, in Hamra, by storm in her first-ever live show in her home country. Known for her Arabic rendition of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World," Lapidus has ventured from a career in fashion into the world of singing and songwriting, and is ready to bring her art back to her city.

Usually, her performance involves a seven- or eight-piece band, but this time, she's chosen a "more electro touch," she told L'Orient Today. 

For more information, click here. To read our interview with the artist, click here.

And if you're not in Beirut on Saturday, Fann À Porter in Jumeirah, Dubai, is presenting "Shams," Syrian artist Monif Ajaj's first solo exhibition. Choosing to alternate between ink on paper and acrylic on canvas, Ajaj is doing more than mixing mediums.

He reexamines the idea of a sunflower, a part of nature that follows warmth and light in any direction, versus a snake, a mythical teacher that leads us into temptation and evil. Ajaj peels back the petals and the dead skin, and asks, "Does darkness ever carry the potential for renewal?"

For more information, click here.

Catch rising painter and sculptor Sarah Zaki’s debut solo exhibition, "A Room Full of Strangers," at Mashrabia Gallery in Cairo. In a world obsessed with having us pinpoint and name our "identities," Zaki instead wonders what the issue is with having one that is ever-changing, shifting in different environments, conversations and contexts.

The "self" is performative and fragmented, no matter what we do, and Zaki doesn't try to find a resolution, only a story.

For more information, click here.

If your favorite combo is when art is gorgeous, colorful and freaks you out a little (like me), don't miss "Faces of Becoming" by artist and painter Kinda Marouf at Khuzamah Abu Joudeh Gallery, in Amman. Using bright and bold colors, Marouf creates worlds of dozens of identical faces on her canvas, enough to leave you dizzy and with the faint feeling that you recognize some of them.

For more information, click here.

Didn't find what you were looking for? Stay up to date with all these events and more everywhere in the Arab world through the Mym Agenda, available on our website here.