Ever wondered what happens when the raw energy of street aesthetics meets the polished world of an art gallery? Ishara Art Foundation is set to answer just that with its new summer exhibition, ‘No Trespassing'.
A date for your diary: Running from 4 July to 30 August 2025, at the gallery located in Warehouse 3 of Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue, this show invites you to see familiar spaces through a new lens.
Exploring Urban Narratives
The art exhibition is curated by Priyanka Mehra, the Exhibitions Manager and Programmes Curator at Ishara Art Foundation.
Mehra brings a wealth of experience to the show, having contributed to diverse artistic initiatives across the region, including public art commissions in the UAE, urban regeneration programmes in India, and the conceptualisation of Public Art Master Plans in the KSA.
For ‘No Trespassing’, she channels the aesthetics of art into a formal gallery setting.
The exhibition features six UAE-based and South Asian artists – Fatspatrol (Fathima Mohiuddin, H11235 (Kiran Maharjan, Khaled Esguerra, Rami Farook, Salma Dib, and Sara Alahbabi.
For ‘No Trespassing’, the artists delve deep into their personal relationships with urban environments, using the street as both their inspiration and their medium.
The exhibition highlights the street's inherent resistance to rigid definitions, showcasing it as a site of constant deconstruction and reinvention.
Look closely, and you'll find that signposts, building materials, pavements, lights, and even human traces all become powerful inscriptions of a city's ongoing movement.
Challenging artistic perceptions
'No Trespassing' gets you thinking about what it really means to make and see art that comes from the street. The artists have created their pieces by interacting directly with the spaces, much like how a city's people leave their mark. By "tagging" the gallery walls and floors, they're claiming the space as their own.
This bold move questions the idea that traditional gallery art is somehow more valuable.
This art exhibition in Dubai is a must-visit for anyone interested in contemporary art and new cultural perspectives.
Visit: www.ishara.org
Evangeline Elsa is a Dubai-based journalist with 15 years of experience. She enjoys telling success stories and writing on lifestyle, arts, interiors, F&B, and Korean culture. A homebody at heart, she paints, sings, reads Substacks, and dotes on her rescue dog, Pepper.
