Faris Alshafar’s “Everybody Changes Underwater” at Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Dubai: An Emirati Painter Dives Into Colour

A first solo exhibition is a declaration, and Faris Alshafar has chosen to make his in a new language. Faris Alshafar’s “Everybody Changes Underwater” at Aisha Alabbar Gallery in Dubai, opening on 16 November 2026 during Alserkal Art Week and running into January 2027, brings together new oil paintings that mark the Emirati artist’s move from monochrome into full colour. The question the show circles, in the words of the Alserkal programme, is “what happens when something is fully immersed.”

A self-taught painter between Dubai and New York

Born in the UAE in 1995, Alshafar is self-taught as a painter. His formal training lies elsewhere: a BBA in marketing from the American University in Dubai (2017) and an MA in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute in New York (2021). He now divides his time between Dubai and New York. Before this debut, he took part in group presentations including “The Two Walks” at Carbon 12 (2026), “The Rhythm of Existence” with Aisha Alabbar Gallery at Art Dubai (2025), Art Düsseldorf with Bawa Gallery (2025) and “Narratives of Belonging” for Dubai Culture at the Al Safa Art and Design Library (2024).

He has also worked on the other side of the wall: from 2021 to 2024 he curated “Jubilee”, a project marking the UAE’s 50th anniversary at the country’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in collaboration with the Barjeel Art Foundation. His work is held by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UAE Permanent Mission to the UN, the UAE Consulate in New York and the Abu Dhabi Executive Office.

Episodes, not narratives

The gallery describes the paintings as arranged like episodes, each with its own internal logic — a structure that owes something to the two sources Alshafar names most often: music and video games. Rather than telling a single story, the canvases build non-linear sequences through dissolution, distortion and discontinuity. Their subject is change: how people alter their appearance and behaviour in response to desire, and to expectations they set for themselves or that others set for them. Interpersonal, corporate and even military circumstances shape the forms, the gallery notes, without ever becoming the explicit subject.

From ice to sea to earth

Colour does much of the work here. Palettes travel from icy to nautical to earthy tones before dissolving into spaces that belong to no particular place. Figures hang like marionettes against structural negative space, while glyph-like marks recall shells, clock hands and candles — small emblems of growth, time and burning down. Two works stand out in the gallery’s account. What It Feels Like for a Pearl is a large pearlescent seascape about a grain of sand reaching its final form — a neat metaphor for transformation under pressure. Void and Compensation imagines a closed system of melting ice and smoke, and nods to Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace.

Aisha Alabbar Gallery and Alserkal Art Week

Aisha Alabbar Gallery occupies a warehouse on Alserkal Avenue in Al Quoz, the industrial district that has become the centre of Dubai’s gallery scene. Opening a young Emirati painter’s debut during Alserkal Art Week, when collectors and curators from across the region tour the Avenue, gives the show maximum visibility. It is also a reminder that the UAE’s own generation of painters — not only the international names shown in the city — is now a core part of the local programme.

Why it matters

• For collectors: an early opportunity to follow an Emirati painter at the moment of a decisive stylistic shift, with work already in national collections.
• For painters: an interesting case of a monochrome practice opening up to colour, and of game and music structures informing composition.
• For visitors to Alserkal Art Week: a fresh, regionally rooted voice among the week’s many openings.

Visiting information

Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Warehouse C-19, Alserkal Avenue, 17th Street, Al Quoz Industrial Area 1, Dubai. 16 November 2026 – 6 January 2027 (closing date per Alserkal Avenue; please confirm with the gallery). Open Monday to Saturday, 10:00–18:00, closed on public holidays. Phone +971 4 344 7747, email [email protected]. See our Everybody Changes Underwater listing, the official Aisha Alabbar Gallery exhibition page, and more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.