Tatiana Chalhoub at Gallery Isabelle, Dubai: A Forest Grows in the Desert

In 2014, chlorine left a stain on one of Tatiana Chalhoub’s works. It spread in branching lines, and her grandmother, looking at it, saw a tree — “the tree of your life”, as the gallery’s press release quotes her. More than a decade later, that accident has grown into a forest. Tatiana Chalhoub: The Trees Now Stand Unpruned and Wild at Gallery Isabelle, Dubai, opening on 16 November 2026, is the Brazilian artist’s first exhibition in the UAE: new paintings, glazed ceramics and ceramic collages in which the lush vegetation of Rio de Janeiro meets the animals and light of the desert.

From Rio to São Paulo — and into the kiln

Chalhoub was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1987 and now lives and works in São Paulo. She studied graphic design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, then spent 2012 to 2014 working in the studio of the painter Lúcia Laguna, a formative apprenticeship with one of Brazil’s most respected painters of layered urban space. In 2015 she began working with ceramics, and her practice has since moved fluidly between painting and sculpture. Her work is held by the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, and her recent solo exhibitions include Romper o dia, crack of dawn at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in Rio in 2024.

Breaking things on purpose

Chalhoub builds images by accumulation and rupture. According to the gallery, she layers, cuts, breaks and reassembles; ceramic fragments, refractory clay and high-temperature glazes sit alongside oil and acrylic. The kiln introduces chance — colours shift, surfaces crack, textures change in ways no artist fully controls. Rather than hide those fractures, she treats them as structure. The cracks become drawing.

That attitude gives the show its title, taken from the poem “Grandmothers Land” by the poet William Oandasan. Unpruned and wild suggests growth that has stopped obeying a gardener. It is a fitting image for works that let material misbehave.

What you will see

The tree is the central motif. The gallery lists works including Purple Trunks, Tree with Orange Trunk, Two Trees in a Lake, Green Tree, Rock Tree, Two Crowns and Windy Forest, alongside ceramic collages such as Vaso 01 and Vaso 02, all dated 2026. Foliage and flowers share these dense compositions with birds, gazelles, reptiles and scorpions — a bestiary that belongs firmly to the Arabian desert rather than the Atlantic forest.

One detail turns the show into something close to a family memoir. The desert animals have blue glass eyes made from melted glassware that belonged to the artist’s grandmother Therezinha, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants to Brazil, who died around the time Chalhoub was invited to Dubai. Green Tree, the gallery explains, carries the memory of that first chlorine “tree of life”. The exhibition is, in a quiet way, an act of mourning that refuses to be solemn — it is full of colour and animal life.

Brazil, Lebanon, the Gulf: a triangle of belonging

There is a resonance here that Dubai audiences will recognise. Brazil has one of the world’s largest Lebanese diasporas, and the Gulf is home to many families whose histories cross the same routes. A Brazilian artist of Lebanese descent showing trees and gazelles in Al Quoz closes a circle of migration and memory without needing to spell it out. The juxtaposition of rainforest and desert is not exotic decoration; it is a map of a family.

Gallery Isabelle and Alserkal Art Week

Gallery Isabelle — long known as Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde — is one of the established spaces of Alserkal Avenue, the arts district in Al Quoz. The opening coincides with Alserkal Art Week, which runs from 15 to 22 November 2026, when the district’s galleries unveil new shows together. It is the best week of the year to see the Dubai scene in one walk.

For collectors and painters

For collectors, Chalhoub’s museum presence in São Paulo and her move between painting and ceramics make this first regional show a notable introduction. Ceramic collages are a hybrid category worth studying closely: they are wall works that behave like painting but carry the permanence and risk of fired material. For painters, the lesson is about accident. Chalhoub’s practice began with a stain someone else read as an image. Leaving room for chance — and for another person’s eye — can be as productive as any plan.

Visiting information

Gallery Isabelle, Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai. 16 November 2026 – 12 January 2027 (the opening reception time has not been published — check with the gallery). Open Monday–Friday 10:00–18:00 and Saturday 11:00–19:00. Tel. +971 4 323 5052, [email protected]. See the gallery’s exhibition page, our Tatiana Chalhoub Dubai listing, and more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.