Middle East and Africa Art Exhibitions

Spring 2026

This season across the Middle East and Africa is less about cohesion than about pressure points. Major institutions continue to frame canonical figures, as seen in Pablo Picasso at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, while elsewhere the focus shifts toward practices shaped by instability, memory, and transformation.

In Istanbul, Semiha Berksoy emerges as a foundational figure whose work moves between performance and painting, resisting fixed categorisation. That refusal of stability extends into the 7th Mardin Biennial, where geography itself becomes a curatorial condition rather than a backdrop.

The strongest propositions, however, come from Southern Africa. Portia Zvavahera and Irma Stern anchor two distinct temporalities, one contemporary and one historical, both negotiating identity through material and image.

Across these exhibitions, what emerges is not a unified narrative but a set of competing frameworks: canon and revision, centre and periphery, permanence and change.