'I like to like what others are liking': Where to be this weekend in the Middle East

If your favorite activities include staring into a space with background noise playing, reading a character-driven book or re-reading your old journals, this week's edition is for you.

As obsessive daydreamers, our sense of self and identity is often so clear to us that we never learn to find the words for it, instead growing accustomed to the unspoken understanding of our inner worlds.

Exhibits today tackle this relationship between public and private, identity and society, the raw and the cooked and the chicken and the egg.

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 to do this weekend in Beirut:

Painter Alaa al-Jebbeh's first solo exhibition, “Metamorphosis,” opens this Thursday at Maya Art Space in Downtown Beirut.

Originally from Baalbeck, Jebbeh's work deep dives into how deeply rooted in (and melted into) we are other bodies, objects and environments. As gory as it might seem, he highlights how our Siamese-twin-level attachments are the only way to achieve transformation, dialogue and renewal. Think of his visuals as poetic horror movies.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Dubai:

Opera Gallery Dubai in DIFC is showcasing painter Thomas Dillon's loud and explosive art in "The Raw and the Cooked."

Leaning on the idea of binaries and dichotomies, how elements and colors oppose and fight against each other, Dillon builds a new world on each canvas where you're transported into its chaos. It also helps that each artwork is double your height.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Sharjah:

Is behind every desire a secret urge to become the object of obsession? Or do we only allow ourselves to desire what we deem close to our identities? Brazilian artist Leda Catunda tries to understand whether the chicken or the egg came first in this scenario.

"I like to like what others are liking," showing at Sharjah Art Foundation, spans four decades of Catunda’s work, charting her evolution from figurative painting to multimedia exhibitions and delving into the interplay between visual pleasure and personal memory.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Riyadh:

Painter Adel Khamri invites you into his tiny worlds in his latest exhibition, "Abstract Miniatures," showing at Gallery Naila.

Khamri has mastered the art of somber yet colorful, creating a crowded yet silent village on each canvas. Today's self-administered Rorschach test was realizing that they look like melted Christian iconography to me. You'll get to test your own interpretations this weekend, too.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Doha:

"Portals in Flux," showing at Fire Station, brings together the work of 15 Qatar-based artists whose practices navigate memory, materiality and imagined worlds. Walking through the show transports you from one artist's imaginary world to another's, giving you the same feeling you had when you were a kid, playing pretend in your room and making it your whole world.

The artists got to explore what process, inquiry and evolution mean in their inner worlds. Also, the exhibition just makes you want to play beit byout again.

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.