If you are a regular reader of our newsletters, you will know just how wide and varied the exhibitions and events that we cover are.  It is one of the pleasures of compling the monthly round up to discover just how broad the spread of contemporary Middle Eastern art in the international artworld is, from Australia to China to Europe and the US. 

And it's wonderful also to see so many prizes being awarded to artists from the region (noteworthy ones include Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige for the 2017 Prix Marcel Duchamp; Mona Hatoum, the  Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon award; Idris Khan, the American Architecture Prize 2017, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, the 2018 Abraaj Group Art Prize; and Rosalind Nashashibi nominated for the Turner Prize 2017). 

As always, we wish you safe travels and hope to see you at the forthcoming Abu Dhabi Art Fair from 8 - 11 November.  

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alien, immigrant, expat, asylum seeker, refugee, undocumented, tourist, fugitive, exiled, homeless
All of the above are words used to describe people and situations related to the individuals who come to live in, travel throughout, or escape from, a country or condition. Every single artist in this exhibition has been one of the above. Despite their situational differences, all peoples navigating immigrancy hold a powerful position. This exhibition is additive. These works of thought will come and go as their creators. The exhibition will change. It will never be static.

Fifty years after the first Arte Povera show, this exhibition looks at how it has informed the work of several British artists who graduated from art schools in the 1970s and 1980s. It traces their different affinities with a way of working that went beyond modernism in terms of its interest in the personal and subjective, its rejection of a coherent style and its promotion of artistic freedom.

2017 marks the 150-year milestone of the Canadian Confederation. For that occasion, the Canadian Cultural Centre has initiated a reflection on one particular dimension of the Canadian national identity: the diversity generated by immigration. Together with the First Nations (indigenous peoples) and the so-called "founding" peoples ( from the era of the French and English colonies ), immigrant communities that arrived throughout its history and to this day, form another stem of the variegated population of Canada.

Atoui's use of sound challenges and expands our established ways of understanding and experiencing this medium.

A homecoming exhibition of the British-Moroccan artist, showcasing his vibrant fusion of contemporary cultures through new and celebrated works.

Born and raised in Larache, Hajjaj moved to the UK aged twelve, but has spent much of his life travelling between the two countries and cultures. His artworks reflect his nomadic lifestyle and the relationships he has formed with a variety of characters along the way, from musicians to artists and athletes to street performers. These individuals inspire Hajjaj's diverse artworks from photographic portraits to video installations, sculpture, music, design and handcrafted objects.

Desert to Delta presents 20 artists and a video artist collective from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Curated by AMUM, selected work ranges from seemingly traditional manuscript illumination to bold "calligraffiti," from bronze sculpture to sound and "scent" portraits, from cell-phone photography to multi-media installation.   Saudi artists address issues that resonate throughout the world:  environmental degradation, economic disparity, urban growth and loss of traditional culture, social inequality of women and minorities, and escalating tensions between and among ideologies.   While these concerns may be universal, Saudi artists approach them through the lens of their country's unique history and forms of cultural expression.

Encompassing several bodies of work created over decades, Farhad Moshiri: Go West explores the artist's varied subject matter, deft use of language, and wide-ranging materials and methods. Moshiri addresses contemporary Iran's traditions and historic isolationism, and simultaneously acknowledges the powerful appeal and influence of Western culture in his homeland. Born in 1963 in Shiraz, Iran, Moshiri spent a portion of his formative years in the United States during the Iranian Revolution, returning to Iran years later as a young adult and artist.

The artist's first major solo exhibition in the United States in twenty years, this show unites a group of major sculptures and installations from American and European collections. The centerpieces of the exhibition are Homebound, 1999, a room size tableaux of kitchen utensils threaded together by a crackling wire of live electricity, and La Grande Broyeuse (Mouli-Julienne x 17), 1999. In La Grande Broyeuse Hatoum has dramatically altered the size of a device designed to slice vegetables. Through her artistic process a banal object associated with the feminine sphere of domesticity becomes a strange and towering beast.

Over the course of several years, Iranian cinema has established its own unique and relevant voice on the global stage. Compared to cinema, however, Iran has yet to develop an established history of video art, and the genre is still a new phenomenon for Iranian artists-only recently emerging in the '90s. It was during this time that Shirin Neshat, an Iranian-born artist, successfully straddled two cultures and received world recognition for her video, film, and photography. Examining the trajectory of Iranian video art, the main question posed in this exhibition asks: What is the nature of contemporary video art as it has developed in the new millennium in Iran?

Jacques Majorelle's Morocco includes paintings of Marrakech, discovered by Majorelle in 1917, meticulous depictions of High Atlas kasbahs painted from the 1920s, and hymns to women and to his superb botanical garden that he created at the beginning of the 1930s. It is a tribute to this orientalist painter who captured and celebrated the beauty of Morocco during the first half of the 20th century.

The exhibition Fascination with Persepolis is about European travellers, photographers, and archaeologists who visited the ruins of Persepolis in centuries past. The desire to know more about these ancient monuments was kindled in the fourteenth century, when merchants and diplomats started making the long journey to the south of present-day Iran. Persepolis is without a doubt one of the most fascinating archaeological sites in the ancient world. The Persian palace complex still strikes awe into every visitor who sees its vast size and the great beauty of the monuments for the first time.

Abbas Akhavan's practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, sculpture, video, and performance. The domestic sphere, as a forked space between hospitality and hostility, has been an ongoing area of research. Earlier works have explored the relationship between the house and nation state and how the trauma and systemic violence enacted upon civilians can be inherited and re-enacted within the family. More recent works have wandered into spaces just outside the home - the backyard, the garden, and other domesticated landscapes.

This series of portraits, taken between 1975 and 1977, documents sex workers from the former red light district, Shahr-e No, in Tehran, Iran. Following the 1953 Iranian coup a wall was erected around the area, creating an inner-city ghetto where approximately 1,500 women lived and worked. Here Golestan witnessed 'the social, financial, hygienic, behavioural and psychological problems that exist in everyday society ... magnified.'

Golestan spent several years researching the area and gaining the trust of the residents, developing a connection with his subjects evidenced by the sensitivity of his portraits. Golestan believed in the power of art to challenge accepted narratives.

The exhibition will include two bodies of work by Aissa Deebi: The Trial (2013) and Motherland (2016). The projects were previously were conceived for biennials: The Trial for the 2013 Venice Biennale and Motherland for the 2016 Çanakkale Biennale. By bringing together these two works, this exhibition creates a dialogue between their themes, including revolution and exile, but it also raises a number of issues related to their original context in international exhibitions in which national identity plays a particular role.