Illustration by Jaimee Lee Haddad.
It's hard not to be in a constant state of existential and identity crisis as you read artists' manifestos here every week. Can't an exhibition just be pretty for the sake of pretty? Maybe it is always 'just' pretty, and every underlying meaning is what we force onto it in the name of intellectualism – or so that we have a newsletter to read every Thursday.
Every Thursday, L’Orient Today, in partnership with The MYM Agenda, guides you through events across the Middle East that are actually worth your time.
What to do this weekend in Dubai:
Once, while visiting a fortune teller, she tilted my coffee cup on its head, and as we waited for the symbols to appear, she looked in my eyes and read the fortune "on my face." The weirdest part is that everything she said happened in the following weeks.
It seems like painter Kais Salman and I frequent the same fortune teller, as his latest exhibition, "Remnants," dives into the stories and fortunes the face tells. Showing at Dubai's Ayyam Gallery, Salman presents the face not as an identity but as a reflection of our perceptions, creating a space for questioning rather than recognition.
As you stare into the thick layers of paint, a sense of unease arises as faces and bodies slowly start taking shape. But they never fully reveal themselves, giving you this almost voyeuristic feeling.
For more information, click here.
What to do this weekend in Cairo:
To me, the divine would not look like a hallucination I'd have if I were to take acid and stare at a Buddha statue, but Marwan al-Gamal agrees to disagree (different strokes for different folks?). In his latest exhibition, "Magnificent Creatures," at Mashrabia Gallery, Gamal's canvases emit so much energy that it stares you squarely in the eye.
While their grandeur is meant to inspire fear, their divinity also stirs your conscious and unconscious selves, pushing feelings and geopolitical misunderstandings you didn't know you were holding to the surface.
For more information, click here.
What to do this weekend in Jeddah:
Philosophers once theorized what can be summed up as, "To think is to be, but to be or not to be?" to question the role and importance of identity to our physical and living selves.
"I Am Not What I Am, I Become," showing at Athr Gallery in Jeddah, is a group exhibition meant to create a pathway for the audience to see their own identity as a process rather than a fixed image.
The artists map out their own journeys, and instead of offering neat conclusions, the works present uncertainty, doubt and self-questioning as essential states of becoming.
For more information, click here.
What to do this weekend in Doha:
The National Museum of Qatar is inviting you to its 50th birthday party this month, to look back at five decades of exhibitions and Qatari heritage through archival photographs, videos, personal stories, foundational documents, and new artistic responses.
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.
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