Reimagining leather, maps and the streets: Where to be this weekend in the Middle East

L'Orient-Le Jour

a day ago

If you're tired of your days growing longer and hotter as your diaspora cousins overstay their welcome, this week, we're counting down the best air-conditioned events — perfect for a solo date or your favorite art aficionado — that you won't want to miss.
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.
Consider this your weekly shortcut to what matters in the region's buzzing cultural scene.
This week, Dar el-Nimr in Beirut is turning Christian iconography into a bright and grandiose exhibition that you won't get to recreate in your local churches. As the Ottoman era was coming to an end, Palestine became home to Greek and Russian iconographers, enriched by the hands of local artisans.
If you, like most Lebanese, are jealous of your grandparents' trips to Jerusalem in the '60s and the religious souvenirs they hang on to, you can now live vicariously through them when you visit "On Earth as it is in Heaven." Wander among large-scale maps and souvenirs that pilgrims — like your grandfather — carried back.
If you hang around Beirut art spaces and smoking sections, you'll know the scene is buzzing with talks about multimedia artist Vartan Avakian's latest exhibition at Marfa' gallery.
The Armenian artist starts from his point 0 — his family's handwritten notebook on Armenian traditions that they safeguarded when fleeing the genocide. Using hand-drawn maps, painted canvases and specks of gold, the exhibition, aptly named 'A Curse that Turns Gold into Ladybugs,' traces the long-term effects of genocide on a community, especially in a context where alarms are sounding on Israel's brutal war on Palestinians in Gaza.
Be one of the first people to meet 'Leukeather' — the sustainable leather alternative developed by artist Nuhayr Zein from discarded White Popinactree seed pods in the UAE. Sharjah's 1971 – Design Space invites you to explore the research, process and artistry behind the invention, alongside a selection of Zein's earlier works.
At its heart stands Sara'ir, a cabinet that ties Zein's Egyptian heritage and Emirati upbringing in Al Ain to a broader cultural memory. Inspired by the traditional Egyptian Neesh (النيش), she attempts to use a familiar household fixture for personal narrative and material innovation.
"No Trespassing" at Ishara Art Foundation, in Al Quoz, tackles the complicated aesthetics of the streets through the lens of six UAE-based and South Asian multimedia artists, engaging with it as both subject and medium.
Rather than attempting to define the street, the exhibition underlines its resistance to definition. The streets are a setting, an area in your city, a public space that we often make our own through signposts, building materials, pavements, lights and street art. We blend the private and the public every time we step outside, and the exhibition tries to retrace pedestrians' footsteps, showcasing how streets are constantly being shaped by those who pass through them.
If you're a nerd for Egyptian contemporary art, dive into " Echoes and Currents: 35 Years of Contemporary Art" at Mashrabia Gallery in Cairo. The iconic gallery is hosting artworks from established and emerging artists, and re-welcoming some old friends, as an open, evolving archive of art, memory and conversations.
For more information, click here.
Still buzzing from its critical acclaim when it premiered at ACP-Palazzo Franchetti in Venice in 2024, " Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices," now lands at M7 in Doha.
The exhibition — more so an experience — features works by more than 40 filmmakers and artists from the Arab world, Africa and Southeast Asia, and takes you on a transnational trip through each community's stories of exile and survival, weighing the pros and cons of displacement and solidarity.
Bahrain National Museum is dedicating the entire month of August to future culture makers and trendsetters. Each week, it's hosting a series of workshops and activities for kids between the ages of 8 and 12 on Bahraini history, archaeology, arts and crafts and concluding with Treasures of Bahraini Heritage.