From digital dreamscapes to ancient legacies, these are the seven exhibitions shaping art and culture in the capital this year.
Once a city known for its finance towers and restrained five-star gloss, Abu Dhabi is steadily carving a new identity — one rooted in art, ideas and cultural ambition. With institutions like Louvre Abu Dhabi and the soon-to-open Guggenheim, the capital has secured a serious footing on the global art stage. But beyond the headline institutions, there’s a thriving current of homegrown creativity, anchored by venues like the Cultural Foundation and Manarat Al Saadiyat. Here’s your guide to the most anticipated — and intriguing — exhibitions to explore in Abu Dhabi in 2025.
Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power, Louvre Abu Dhabi
A powerful and necessary dialogue between past and present, empire and identity, this landmark exhibition marks Louvre Abu Dhabi’s first display dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa. Presented in collaboration with Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, it features more than 300 extraordinary objects, from ornate royal regalia and battlefield shields to Congolese headdresses and sacred emblems of power. The exhibition sheds light on the great and ancient African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Great Zimbabwe while confronting the painful histories of colonial acquisition and cultural restitution. Bold, timely and beautifully curated, it runs until 8 June 2025.
Pictures of the Cosmos, Louvre Abu Dhabi
In 2018, Emirati astronaut (or najmonaut) Hazza Al-Mansouri made history as the first Emirati in space. Several years later, H.E. Sultan Al Neyadi (now the country’s Minister of State for Youth Affairs), broke another record for the longest Arab space mission, clocking in six months in orbit aboard the ISS. Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Pictures of the Cosmos celebrates these milestones by exploring how humanity has imagined and represented the universe across cultures and centuries. From ancient astrolabes to a life-size replica of a space module, this family-friendly exhibition blends art, science and storytelling in a way that’s accessible to younger audiences. Designed with interactivity in mind, it’s ideal for children but compelling enough for adults too. Pictures of the Cosmos comes in collaboration with Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre and will run until 30 June 2025.
Maitha Abdalla: Between Metamorphosis and Reality
Zayed University alumna Maitha Abdalla is one of the UAE’s most celebrated multidisciplinary artists. Her latest solo exhibition, Between Metamorphosis and Reality, transforms the Cultural Foundation into a liminal space between waking and dreaming, using sculpture and paint to explore memory and myth. Abdalla’s figures — often solitary, veiled or shapeshifting — speak to inner worlds shaped by folklore, gender and the fragility of self-perception. Rendered with her own hands and body, her works carry a rawness that feels almost ritualistic, as though drawn directly from the subconscious. The exhibition is on the first floor of the Cultural Foundation and runs until 30 August 2025.
To Know Malaysia is to Love Malaysia: Highlights from The AFK Collection
There are many ways to tell a nation’s story, and this one is told in colour and texture. Showcased in the Cultural Institution, To Know Malaysia is to Love Malaysia is an invitation into the soul of Malaysia through one of the country’s most respected private art collections — The AFK Collection. Sculptures, paintings and installations trace the country’s evolution from post-independence nationhood to the multicultural complexity it is today.
The exhibition is split across five thematic sections, highlighting pioneering Malaysian voices such as Yusof Ghani, Ahmad Fuad Osman, Anniketyni Madian and Hamir Soib. Together, their work interrogates memory, identity and place, folding together folk tradition, political commentary and surrealist experimentation. This is Malaysian art in all its contradiction and colour — not simplified, but seen. It is on view until 10 September 2025.
teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi
New to Saadiyat Island, teamLab Phenomena is a mind-bending digital installation designed to push the boundaries of imagination. The 17,000-square-metre exhibit is a multi-sensory simulated world where light, sound and movement react in real time to the presence of the viewer. It isn’t just a digital spectacle for spectacle’s sake — inspired by environmental processes like evaporation and wind flow, everything is built to feel alive, shifting and responding at every turn. A standout in the exhibit is the ‘Biocosmos’, a spatial experience that places visitors above a ‘void’ on a suspended net, surrounded by a flock of digital birds. It’s hyper-realistic and demanding, drawing on studies of swarm intelligence. This Abu Dhabi exhibition is part art, part science, and entirely unlike anything else in the city. It is teamLab’s largest permanent exhibit and is open until 7pm each day.
Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits, Manarat Al Saadiyat
What does it mean to make art in a world where identity is always in flux? This question sits at the heart of Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits — a major exhibition presented by Abu Dhabi Festival and the Seoul Museum of Art. Curated by Kyung-Hwan Yeo and Maya El Khalil, and designed by acclaimed studio Formafantasma, the show unpacks six decades of Korean contemporary art through the lens of Nam June Paik’s idea of ‘open circuits’. Moving from body and gesture to gender, technology and ecology, the collection ripples with energy and contradiction, offering a rare cross-cultural dialogue between Seoul and Abu Dhabi. It runs at Manarat Al Saadiyat from 16 May to 30 June 2025.
Art Here 2025, Louvre Abu Dhabi
Now in its fifth edition, Art Here is set to return later this year to Louvre Abu Dhabi with a quietly powerful theme: Shadows. Curated by Swiss-Japanese curator Sophie Mayuko Arni, this year’s exhibition explores the architectural and emotional nuances of light and darkness through the lens of Japanese In’Ei (陰影) aesthetics and the intricate lattice work of Khaleeji mashrabiya. Set fittingly beneath the museum’s dome of dappled light, the show will bring together artists from across the GCC, wider MENA region, and — new this year— Japan, in a conversation that plays out in sculpture and installation. Art Here 2025 opens its doors in October and will run until December.
