“Urdu Worlds”: Dubai hosts UAE’s first contemporary art exhibition on the Urdu language

Welcome back to Al-Monitor Dubai.

A landmark exhibition celebrating the Urdu language has opened at Dubai’s Ishara Art Foundation, bringing together works by Pakistani artist Ali Kazim and Indian artist Zarina in a shared exploration that seeks to transcend national and linguistic boundaries through art. Elsewhere in the city, a solo exhibition by Emirati artist Asma Belhamar presents an imaginary, whimsical interpretation of the courtyard of her family home. Meanwhile, the 14th edition of the Sikka Art & Design Festival is unfolding across Dubai’s historic districts, drawing creatives from across the United Arab Emirates and the wider region to celebrate culture and artistic expression at a moment of regional and global uncertainty.

If you want to receive this newsletter or our other new weekly City Pulse newsletters — for Doha, Istanbul and Riyadh — sign up here.

Happy reading,

Rebecca

P.S. Have feedback or tips on Dubai's culture scene? Send them my way at contactus@al-monitor.com.

1. Leading the week: ‘Urdu Worlds,’ featuring Ali Kazim and Zarina

Ali Kazim. Untitled from “Children of Faith" series. 2024-2025. (Courtesy of the artist and Ishara Art Foundation) 

Ishara Art Foundation’s latest exhibition, “Urdu Worlds,” marks the first contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language in the United Arab Emirates. Poignant and haunting images, paintings and installations fill the spaces of the foundation in Alserkal Avenue, exploring how language provides tools to create and shape one’s private experience and shared cultural understandings. 

Curated by Hammad Nasr, the show bravely positions the works of Indian artist Zarina, who was born in Aligarh, with the multimedia works of Ali Kazim, who is based in Lahore, Pakistan. Zarina’s life traveling across continents led her to find a sense of belonging in the Urdu language, leading her to weave its script, poetry and proverbs into her intricate print works. The works of Kazim, on the other hand, reflect Urdu’s sense of place and the language’s layered history. His textured watercolors and drawings, largely of desolate landscapes and solitary figures, are inspired by the art and history of the Indian subcontinent, and often employ highly intricate brushwork inspired by the region’s historical miniature painting techniques. 

“Urdu Worlds explores how artists manifest their language worlds through their art, and invite audiences to enter these worlds at the level of feeling – without linguistic translation,” Nasr explains to Al-Monitor. “Zarina and Kazim come from different generations, and were born in neighbouring countries divided at birth–India and Pakistan. They lived continents apart (Zarina mostly in New York, Kazim in Lahore) and worked in distinctive ways; but their work shares a common commitment to the Urdu language.”

The exhibition is being staged at a time when regional divides in South Asia and globally are increasing. Urdu Worlds emphasizes the power of art to bridge linguistic divides and tap into the imaginative worlds of artists, even when a shared language is absent. The exhibition also investigates how institutions use language to establish narratives of inclusion and exclusion and highlights how words articulate identity, underscoring the urgency of maintaining a connection to one’s native languages during an era of continual migration and exile.

“At a time where difference is being weaponized politically and literally, it is a hopeful reminder of what we share if we pay attention and listen with all of our senses,” Nasr adds. 

Date: Until May 31, 2026

Location: Ishara Art Foundation, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai

Find more information here.

2. Word on the street: Middle Child

A wholesome breakfast dish at Middle Child, a new restaurant in Alserkal Avenue. (Courtesy of Middle Child)

If you’re craving comfort food in a bookish, intimate and elevated environment, you will love Middle Child, a new restaurant in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai’s cultural district. The restaurant’s exterior has a French bistro flair. Get ready to find a table for a delicious meal aligned with bookshelves and warm decor. Founded by Lebanese food blogger and former Google executive Lynn Hazim, the restaurant describes itself as an all-day eatery, a gourmet grocer and a cookbook shop, inviting guests to browse amidst zesty dishes. Some top meals to try include pappardelle bolognese, one of the eatery’s most popular dishes, incorporating a slow-cooked beef ragu dish; steak with jammy onions, a 200 gram striploin with a sweet and sour flavor pairing, served with fries; and sour cream & onion dip, a popular starter served with Ritz crackers. 

Location: Alserkal Avenue, WH13A

Find more information here.

3. Dubai diary

A view of murals in Dubai’s Al Shindagha Historic Neighborhood for the 14th edition of Sikka Art & Design Festival. (Courtesy of Dubai Culture & Arts Authority)

• Sikka Art & Design Festival

Now in its 14th year, the Sikka Art & Design Festival has become a longstanding gathering point for creatives and artists from across the UAE and the wider GCC, while also drawing friends, families and art lovers into Dubai’s historic districts. The festival has evolved into the emirate’s flagship platform for emerging artists and designers, celebrating Dubai’s role as both a regional and global center for culture and the arts, as well as a growing hub for homegrown talent.

This year, the festival returns under the theme Imagining Dubai: Identities of the Future, showcasing works by more than 450 creatives. A total of 250 artworks are on display across 16 houses in the historic district, spanning a wide range of artistic disciplines.

As part of Dubai Art Season, Sikka 2026 has also unveiled 11 murals by a curated group of artists in line with Dubai Culture’s Public Art Strategy, aimed at enriching the city’s visual landscape. The program includes seven interactive public artworks and six installations, underscoring the dynamism and diversity of the UAE’s contemporary art scene.

Date: Until Feb. 1

Location: Al Shindagha historic neighborhood, Dubai Creek

Find more information here.

• ‘When the Window Refused to Fly, and the Arch Decided to Hold the Sky’ by Asma Belhamar

Marking Emirati artist Asma Belhamar’s first solo exhibition at Green Art Gallery, “When the Window Refused to Fly, and the Arch Decided to Hold the Sky” presents a mix of drawings and installations incorporating 3D-printed stoneware clay, wood and ceramic tiles to explore how architectural elements are bearers of the past and visualizations of the future. As structures that pendulate between past and present, Belhamar’s works hold contradictions relaying both aspirations and nostalgia, inspiration and the desire for preservation.  

Highlighted in the show is the artist’s invitation to view the courtyard of the Emirati house as a type of playground where belonging and memory coincide with play and imagination. This whimsical and satirical take is based on the artist’s own memory: the unfinished courtyard in Belhamar’s family home. As a child, she and her siblings and friends played there with discarded building materials, transforming the empty space into a stage, while the adults discussed what to do with the plot of land. Now, everyone can take part in its playful, nostalgic structure.

Date: Until March 18

Location: Green Art Gallery, Alserkal Avenue

Find more information here. 

• ‘Drift Wood’ by Xiyao Wang

Marking Chinese-born Xiyao Wang’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East, the now-Berlin-based artist reveals a new body of work where his paintings capture a sense of movement, like a dance, reflecting the rhythm of lived experiences. These works are unique in that she doesn’t seek to replicate the act of gesture but relay the perception and sensation of movement itself. The works presented are dreamy, otherworldly and minimalistic, focusing — as she stresses — on the line, the essential component of her work. As composition and color are reduced, the spectator can focus on movement that she renders. It acts as a metaphor for life, the present moment and the unknown.

Date: Until Feb. 28

Location: Perrotin Dubai, Dubai International Financial Center

Find more information here.