The Days Go On: Ayyam Gallery’s 20 Years, From Damascus to Alserkal Avenue

In Arabic, ayyam simply means “days”. When Khaled and Jouhayna Samawi chose the word for the gallery they opened in Damascus in 2006, it sounded modest. Twenty years, a war, an exile and a relocation later, it reads more like a statement of endurance — and that is precisely how the gallery has titled its anniversary show. The Days Go On: 20 Years of Ayyam Gallery opens at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai on 16 November 2026 and runs until 1 January 2027, bringing together work by around 60 artists who have shaped the gallery’s history.

A gallery as a biography

Most anniversary exhibitions are celebrations. This one, judging by the gallery’s own text, is closer to a memoir. The press release presents the show as honouring a journey of continuity, resilience and exchange, and describes the gallery’s path as “a story that has withstood the test of time.” That history is unusual. Ayyam began in Damascus at a moment when the Syrian art scene was attracting fresh international attention; the Dubai space came later, through Khaled Samawi’s partnership with his cousin Hisham; and since 2018 the gallery has been run by the family’s second generation, with Maya Samawi as director.

Dubai, in other words, is not where Ayyam was born but where it survived. Like many cultural institutions of the region, it became a carrier of a scene displaced by conflict — giving Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi and Iranian artists a platform at a time when their home cities could not.

Two painters as curators

The most interesting decision behind the show is its curatorial pairing. Rather than a single in-house curator, Ayyam has invited two artists, Safwan Dahoul and Ali Kaaf, to co-curate. The gallery says each of them represents a continuous artistic timeline. Dahoul, one of Syria’s best-known painters, is famous for the long-running Dream series, whose solitary, sculptural figures have become emblems of introspection and loss. Kaaf, Syrian-born and long based in Berlin, comes from a different direction, with a more experimental relationship to material and abstraction. Two artists, two generations of experience, two ways of looking: that alone promises a less predictable hang than a conventional greatest-hits survey.

Who is in the show

The gallery names around 60 participants. Among them are Youssef Abdelke, whose heavy charcoal still lifes — a knife, a fish, a severed bird — are some of the most powerful political images in contemporary Arab art; Samia Halaby, the Jerusalem-born pioneer of abstraction whose career spans more than six decades; and Tammam Azzam, whose digital collages of bombed Syrian buildings travelled around the world in the early years of the war. The list continues with Kais Salman, Afshin Pirhashemi, Sama Alshaibi and Khaled Akil, among many others. An archive tracing the gallery’s history accompanies the works.

At the time of writing, Ayyam had not published a list of works or installation images, so the precise selection — and the balance between painting, photography, works on paper and sculpture — remains to be seen. That uncertainty is part of the appeal: two artist-curators drawing on twenty years of inventory could produce surprising juxtapositions.

The Alserkal moment

The opening date is no accident. The show begins during Alserkal Art Week (15–22 November 2026), when the warehouses of Al Quoz fill with collectors, curators and visitors for a dense week of openings, talks and performances. Alserkal Avenue has grown from an industrial estate into the Gulf’s most concentrated gallery district, and Ayyam’s Warehouse #11 is one of its long-standing addresses. A 20-year retrospective of a gallery that predates most of its neighbours is a reminder of how quickly the regional art market has matured — and of whose stories built it.

Why collectors and painters should go

For collectors of Middle Eastern art, an anniversary show is a rare chance to see a gallery’s full roster side by side, compare established names with younger voices, and understand the lineages connecting them. For painters, the show offers a lesson in how artists from one region have answered the same historical pressure in radically different visual languages: Abdelke’s austere realism, Halaby’s kinetic abstraction, Dahoul’s dreamlike figuration. And for anyone interested in how art markets work, it is a case study in how a family gallery can turn crisis into continuity.

Visiting information

Ayyam Gallery, Warehouse #11, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz Industrial 1, Dubai. 16 November 2026 – 1 January 2027. Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–7pm, Saturday 12–6pm. The opening reception had not been announced at the time of writing; contact [email protected] or follow @ayyamgallery on Instagram. See our The Days Go On exhibition listing, the official Ayyam Gallery exhibition page and more openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.