Doomscrolling, collective memory and the law of conservation of matter: Where to be this weekend in the Middle East

It's both overwhelming and amazing to remember that every interaction we have is affected by our memories, backgrounds, politics and the law of conservation of matter. Yet we still have the energy to fight through these layers just for a chance to connect.

This week's artists are inviting us to bring everything we thought we had to keep private into the public. It's too isolating to believe we are dissimilar because of our complicated inner worlds, when really our neuroses are what make us so alike. No memory or upbringing is individual. Or maybe you should check today's featured exhibits and decide for yourself.

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.

"What we see is never only what's there, it's what we carry within," writes Lebanese painter Mona Nahleh, whose exhibition "Pareidolia" is showing at Mission Art Beirut in Mar Mikhael this week only.

We all walk around with a million pairs of glasses on, experiencing the world through the thick lenses of our sects, religion, background, gender, personal traumas — just to name a few. Nahleh's paintings attempt to illustrate how layered our experiences always are. "Pareidolia" is not an abstract show; it's actually an accurate representation of how we perceive our world.

For more information, click here.

Showing only until next Friday at Galerie Cherif Tabet in Achrafieh, "A Moment of Union" delves into "our human nature and makeup, specifically into our essential relationship with life and matter," he writes.

"Energy is never created or destroyed, only transformed or transferred from one form to another," meaning every feeling and particle we could ever meet already exists, and it's safe to assume we've separated and reunited with them more than once. Every time we hold a friend's hand, peel an orange, get into a taxi's back seat late at night or stare at a thick cloud in the sky, we're meeting it again and again.

For more information, click here.

Our world has become so hyperconnected that we often don't realize how tense we feel after being on social media for even half an hour, but Sarah Abu Abdallah’s “You Ask, We Answer” thrives in that tension.

The multimedia installation has landed at ATHR Gallery in Jeddah after touring several other galleries, giving you the opportunity to walk through a 50-meter real-life For You page, recreating your evening doomscroll through collages, stickers, images and videos over existential questions.

The gallery's also offering you a 2-for-1: While you're there, ATHR’s art handlers will be stepping into the spotlight for once with “Behind the Frame,” an exhibition shaped by their personal connections to the works they’ve carried, installed and safeguarded over the years.

For more information, click here.

Ceramic artist Lisa Dickschen and visual artist Claire Ferrer sat down one day and asked each other, "What does Jordan look like to you?" (I'm guessing).

In their joint installation, "From City to Sea," currently showing at Jacaranda Images in Amman, the two artists invite us to step into their own kingdom, as their art draws on the country's urban architecture and the coast's salt and sand textures.

For more information, click here.

This Saturday, artist Khoshoua al-Gohary is opening up the small, private world she's built in her unconscious for public consumption.

Showing at TAM Gallery in Marakez, her exhibition "Branches" is an abstract recreation of what I'd imagine was an interest she never knew how to share with those around her: organic cells and the primordial beginnings of nature. In other words, her work is like witnessing the Big Bang, and having it answer all your questions in its visual language of improvised lines and colors.

For more information, click here.

Al Riwaq Art Space in Manama is hosting its Application 005 art residency exhibit, “Mnemosyne: Personal Memories, Shared Histories, and the Memory of Things.”

Its rising stars explore memory and collective history, and really, is there a difference between the personal and collective?

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.