Alserkal Avenue Extends Dubai Art Week Into a Five-Week Art Month
Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue is turning its annual Art Week into a longer, more distributed Art Month, running from April 18 to May 18. The shift adds grants, temporary warehouse space for collectives, and a commercially oriented group exhibition organized with 12 galleries from across the United Arab Emirates, all at a moment when the regional market is under pressure.
The expanded format will spread 16 gallery exhibitions, public art commissions, and more than 100 talks, performances, and events across five weekends. Rather than concentrating openings into a single burst, the program is designed to keep attention, foot traffic, and sales moving over a longer period — a practical response to a climate shaped by conflict, travel disruption, and uncertainty in the Gulf art economy.
Several exhibitions anchor the month. Green Art Gallery will present “All the Lands from Sunrise to Sunset,” a group show that considers the persistence of imperial power through work by artists including Michael Rakowitz. Efie Gallery will debut a public-facing viewing room with art by El Anatsui and Aïda Muluneh, among others. At The Third Line, Sara Naim’s solo exhibition will pair paintings that move between figuration and abstraction with a video work that breaks language into gesture and sound. Leila Heller Gallery will show Douglas White’s “The Great Wave,” a monumental sculpture made from discarded tires that reimagines Hokusai’s iconic print as a study in suspended force.
The timing is closely tied to Art Dubai, which has been rescheduled to mid-May and will shift to an adapted format amid ongoing conflict in the region. Alserkal’s expanded calendar is meant to provide a steadier platform as the fair adjusts.
That role reflects how much the Avenue has grown. Over the past decade, it has developed from a small cluster of galleries into one of Dubai’s key cultural nodes, now housing around 90 creative businesses in repurposed industrial spaces. In that context, Art Month is more than an expanded schedule. It is an attempt to preserve momentum in a market where the movement of people, artworks, and capital has become harder to take for granted.
The Strait of Hormuz remains central to that equation. With disruptions affecting trade routes, airline schedules, and energy prices, the art world’s Gulf ambitions are being tested by forces far beyond the gallery wall. Alserkal’s answer is to stretch the calendar, widen the platform, and keep the system working for as long as it can.
