Drawn into “Interwoven” at Dubai’s House of Arts
Wandering through Expo City Dubai, I didn’t expect to find Interwoven, an exhibition that explores the threads of connection through the lens of contemporary art.
Sense of Wander: ★★★★☆
House of Arts at Expo City Dubai
DUBAI, UAE — This past November, a new cultural space opened its door at Expo City Dubai. For those inclined to wander in search of art, House of Arts is worth the detour.
Positioned as a multidisciplinary cultural centre empowering regional voices, it is already delivering on that promise. Since its opening, it has hosted concerts by the all-female Firdaus Orchestra, and celebrated the national holidays of Bahrain and Qatar through art, live music, food, and film, further enriching the diversity of an already multicultural city.
Its inaugural exhibition, Interwoven, traces the time-honoured practice of weaving through the hands of Emirati and Gulf artists and designers, asking what connection might look like when tradition meets the contemporary world.
With more than a dozen exhibition rooms to explore, the best way to begin is to take the lift to the top floor and slowly make your way down.
You first encounter an installation by Bahraini artist Ghada Khunji, viewed from above: what appears to be a sail fixed to a mast. It can feel like a puzzling beginning, but one worth holding onto until you meet it again at eye level.
Baba & Mami by Ghada Khunji
Further along, sight gives way to scent. In a dimly-lit space, Emirati artist Noura Alserkal’s Magic Carpet 2.0 stretches across the table. This particular carpet is, intriguingly, not woven in thread but in memory. Ground coffee, cardamom, lavender, saffron, myrrh, and her mother’s dukhoon (traditional incense) gather into a textured surface, punctuated by dried roses. Some elements remain whole, others reduced to powder, as though caught between presence and recollection. You don’t just look at this work. You inhale it. And somewhere in that breath, it feels as though you are sharing a fragment of memory with the artist.
Alserkal’s naturalistic approach stands in contrast to the work of Qatari artist Maryam Al-Homaid, whose carpets downstairs use the language of weaving to interpret the changing landscapes of Qatar. The result is a series of woven maps of memory, carrying coastlines, buildings, and the texture of a city rendered in thread. Her piece, titled El Gewan Island, focuses on the emergence of artificial islands, told through pixelated patterns and calligraphic script. Here, land made by human hands is held in place by them, remembered before it disappears.
Magic Carpet 2.0 by Noura Alserkal
El Gewan Island by Maryam Al-Homaid
What makes wandering through Interwoven feel so leisurely and at ease is the building itself. Housed in the former Morocco Pavilion, its more than a dozen rooms flow into one another, each floor connected by a gently descending ramp. This thoughtful design slows you down the way winding corridors in traditional Chinese garden does, giving you room to breathe and reflect between what you have just seen and what comes next. And this, trust me, makes the next encounter more moving.
Omani artist Sarah AlUlaqi’s installation The Shape of Memory gathers traditional Omani trousers suspended in air, their surfaces heavy with geometric and vegetal embroidery worked in gold and silver thread. Each stitch carries the hand of a specific artisan, a technique passed down through generations. Seeing these garments — once worn beneath traditional Omani dress and hidden from most eyes — hanging here, you feel as though you are peering into lives of those who lived before us.
The Shape of Memory by Sarah AlUlaqi
A corner of the exhibition holds something even more intimate. Through His Lens, I Learned to See is a dialogue between Ahmed Yousef Lootah, who spent years photographing Dubai in its earliest days of formation, and his granddaughter AlZaina Lootah, who shaped the exhibition space itself in response to his work. The images are unshowy but quite extraordinary: a city becoming itself, its people, its harbours, and its ambition rising from the sand.
On the same floor, Ghada Khunji’s sails reappear, now at eye level. What read as abstraction from above is now clearer. The sails, aptly titled Baba & Mami, are transformed from her parents’ own garments: her father’s white kandura and her mother’s black abaya, intricately stitched with pearls. It is as personal as a title can be, and the work earns every bit of it.
Through His Lens, I learned to See by AlZaina Lootah
Close up of Ghada Khunji’s Baba & Mami
Nearby, the group exhibition Still, Stirred and Shared, curated by Dirwaza Curatorial Lab, brings together five artists working through personal and collective histories across the UAE and the Gulf. Among them, Shaikha AlKetbi’s videos pauses me from moving forward: ghostly, faceless figures traversing through empty playgrounds and community spaces. Eerie and surreal, they carry the kind of unease that makes you look again and again, wondering what is the story behind it.
The final gallery showcases the work of Najat Makki, a pioneer of Emirati visual art and one of the first Emirati women to receive formal academic training in fine arts. Born in 1956, she has been a key player in shaping contemporary art across the region. Standing before her canvases, you understand why. She renders Dubai’s familiar landscapes — desert, water, sky — in colours so vivid, some almost neon, as if inviting you to look through her creative lens and see a place you thought you already knew.
Video installation by Shaikha AlKetbi
Lavender Fields by Najat Makki
Wandering through Interwoven, what stays with you is not any single work but the cumulative feeling of intimacy: between artist and material, between memory and place, between a region and the hands that have shaped it. The building, too, feels part of this. Constructed from rammed earth and materials sourced within five kilometres of its location, it is nurtured by its land and, in turn, gives back to them, planting seeds of creativity and nourishing those who seek it.
Wanderer’s tip — In collaboration with Cinema Akil, House of Arts has launched a cinema series, screening a curated selection of films from around the world throughout the season. It’s worth checking the schedule in advance to make the most of your visit.
Interwoven is on view at House of Arts, Dubai, through November, 2026.