Geometric politics: Where to be this weekend in the Middle East

As if the world isn't complicated and layered enough, this week's exhibitions have pushed me to consider the political connotations behind geometric shapes, or maybe the other way around.

Before you roll your eyes and feel like you're back on the old Twitter, consider this: Egyptian emperors built pyramids. Israeli and U.S. generals meet at the Pentagon. Communist states are typically obsessed with circular edges. If he had been a shape, Stalin would've been a square.

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

What to do this weekend in Beirut:

BeMA’s public school program, Creative Pathways, asked public school students between the ages of 8 and 12 to help it create Zig Zag Zoom — Lebanon’s first interactive exhibition for kids, by kids, showing at Villa Audi.

Inspired by the National Collection, students were encouraged to tap into their ideas of cultural heritage. To me, nothing sounds more powerful or worth-seeing than kids finding their voices, even if it's through art made out of branches and leaves.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Dubai:

"In the Space of Becoming," showing at Al Quoz's Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Alia Lootah traces the quiet life of shapes between painting, drawing and sculpture, stretching each one's definition as thin as possible.

Through knitted forms, looping lines and shifting materials, often reminiscent of a knight's chainmail, she takes shapes through a slow, attentive process. But form is never finished, only paused.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Jeddah:

Dreaming of emotional stillness and quiet uncertainty, artist Asma Bahmim asks you to be "Here, Now," at her latest exhibition in ATHR Gallery.

Referencing Islamic miniature traditions, Bahmim’s layered works are meant to offer a reflection on tension and transformation. Loaded with connotations, the exhibition draws you into moments where meaning remains open and unresolved. There's no hindsight to help you make sense of your present.

For more information, click here.

What to do this weekend in Doha:

In 1999, architect I.M. Pei was commissioned to design Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art (MIA).

From Square to Octagon and Octagon to Circle traces his journey to define “the essence of Islamic architecture” through original sketches, photographs and archival documents.

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.