As Alserkal Art Month enters its final week, Al Quoz’s creative district is in full bloom. What began as an expanded version of Alserkal Art Week has grown into a five‑week experiment in how a city can think, make and gather together around art, bringing galleries, foundations, collectives and audiences into one shared ecosystem.
If you’ve been meaning to go but haven’t yet made it to the Avenue, this is the chance to step in. From slow, meditative moving images to embodied performance and a cult film classic under the sky, here are five things to catch before Alserkal Art Month signs off on May 18.
Sink into Moving at Cinema Akil
On May 14, Cinema Akil hosts Moving, a 90‑minute video art programme co-presented by Art Dubai and Alserkal, that distills the crux of Art Month’s core ideas in a darkened room.
The co‑curated commissioning project brings together artists represented by Alserkal Avenue galleries who are also showing at Art Dubai, extending the fair beyond its halls and into the city.
Follow images across the city
From May 14–17, Moving will continue on the outdoor screens in The Yard at Alserkal Avenue and at Art Dubai’s Special Edition in Madinat Jumeirah, turning both locations into a shared, extended viewing room.
The continuous-sequence screenings are designed so you can drop in between gallery visits, catch a loop and experience how video art can rewire the rhythm of an urban space.
Experience the body as archive
On May 16 at 6pm, ‘Body Archive: Nothing Resonates’ by Asareh Ebrahimpour takes over Project Space WH51 for one of the week’s most intimate live moments.
An Iranian interdisciplinary artist based in Dubai, Ebrahimpour will combine visual art, physical theatre, dance and somatic practices, treating the body as both recording device and living document.
Watch a cult classic in The Yard
If you prefer your moving images with a dose of film history, The Color of Pomegranates screening in The Yard offers a completely different but no less powerful experience. Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 masterpiece has long been a reference point for artists and filmmakers for its poetic tableaux, saturated colour and icon-like compositions.
To watch it outdoors at Alserkal, surrounded by art and artists, is to feel its imagery crack open in new ways: an old world myth reimagined in a very contemporary city. A reminder that today’s visual culture is always in dialogue with what came before.
Take a slower walk through open studios
Between the timed screenings and scheduled performances, leave room for slower encounters. Shilpa Gupta’s text-based public artwork ‘Still A Sky We Hold’, a newly commissioned iteration of her earlier piece ‘Still They Know Not What I Dream’, underpins the entire month’s programme and remains installed in The Yard.
Around it, Alserkal Arts Foundation continues to host reading groups, open studios and performances by locally based artists, alongside a grants programme supporting research-led projects with awards of up to Dh10,000.
So, drop into a studio, join a conversation or simply walk around the Avenue before the month-long celebration of the arts draws its curtains.
