Illustration by Jaimee Lee Haddad.
November is everyone's 'winding down' month, as we take time to recover between a hectic summer and an even more hectic holiday season to come. Sometimes you need the quiet to trace how the past few months have changed you, a lot like how this week's selection of artists are tracing their personal and national identity timelines in their exhibitions.
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:
Opening this Friday at Dalloul Artist Collective (DAC), "Rewind," Yervant Hawarian’s solo exhibition, revisits Lebanon’s vibrant poster era. As we fight through garbage piles of AI-generated art today, take a look back at a world where posters were literally hand-drawn. Or maybe just go see Alo-wearing girls and performative males making TikToks to Fairuz's Li Beirut.
For more information, click here.
Opening this Wednesday at JAH Art Gallery in Clemenceau, "Just Visions" tracks Sinan Hussein's artistic journey from 2012 to 2025 and the way her outlook on life shifted through time, experience and emotion.
Earlier pieces evoke themes of memory, identity and belonging (the public), while more recent ones move inward (the private). Your visit can be as transformative to you as these 13 years were to the artist, gifting you the chance to track your own growth and personal shifts.
For more information, click here.
What to do this weekend in Dubai:
Opening this Sunday in al-Quoz's Zawyeh Gallery, Palestinian artist Mohammed Joha's "Houselessness" explores loss, resilience and reconstruction through collage.
Collage becomes both a medium and a metaphor. Drawing on his people's experiences with erasure and displacement, Joha fights to make a home out of nothing and everything.
For more information, click here.
What to do this weekend in Doha:
M7 Gallery is showcasing the creative process behind the Houbara Haven tiara, designed by Qatari artist Aisha al-Attiya, crafted by Maison Chaumet and commissioned by Alfardan Jewellery and Qatar Museums.
Through sketches, photographs, and behind-the-scenes footage, the exhibition traces the tiara’s journey from concept to creation. A tiara, usually representing delicate and dainty princesses, this time draws inspiration from the Qatari hunting season, where the Houbara bird finds refuge in the strong branches of the Awsaj tree, evading the falcon.
For more information, click here.
What to do this weekend in Cairo:
Blue is the color we stare at all day, whether on our phones or when we stand outside. It can be bright, part of the sky, or sad and rainy. Painter Amre Heiba's deep dives into the color with his latest exhibition, "When the Walls Breath Blue," showing at Mashrabia Gallery.
Heiba draws the mundane and takes inspiration from the clutter in his workroom, overlooked corners of the street and the ghosts of Alexandria. Sometimes in harmony, sometimes in tension, always in blue rooms.
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.
Israel continues attacks on southern Lebanon, demolishes buildings in Bint Jbeil