Curatorial Ethos
Iris Projects positions itself as a visionary platform seeking to act as an agent of cultural transformation within the UAE and broader regional art scene. Its programme highlights multidisciplinary practices that investigate cultural memory, psychological experience, and evolving Arabian urban landscapes through painting, sculpture, photography, and site-specific installations.
Based in Studio 20 at MiZa, Port Zayed in Abu Dhabi, Iris Projects is a commercial gallery representing a dynamic roster of contemporary regional artists. The gallery presents solo and group exhibitions exploring abstraction, cultural memory, and evolving Arabian urban landscapes through painting, sculpture, photography, and installation. Operating Monday to Friday from 10 AM to 6 PM by appointment, it actively participates in major regional art fairs such as Art Dubai and Abu Dhabi Art.
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Address
Studio 20, Madar 39, MiZa, Port Zayed, Abu Dhabi
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Selected Works
A White Ascent
Loose Leaves: An Ode to Loyalty
Loose Leaves: An Ode to Loyalty
Loose Leaves: An Ode to Loyalty
Loose Leaves: An Ode to Loyalty
Loose Leaves: An Ode to Loyalty
A Peninsula’s Native Thesis 3
Pictographs (Yellow) #3
Pictographs (Yellow) #4
Pictographs (Yellow) #2
A Seed Triology
Untitled
Bitter fruit
Coloured Cement blocks
Anticipation
Artists & People
Full directory →Artists
Represented and guest artists exhibiting with the gallery.
Shamsa Al Omaira
Nasser Al Salem
Matilde Sambo
Monira Al Qadiri
Shilpa Gupta
Reena Saini Kallat
Manal AlDowayan
Juma Al Haj
Ammar Al Attar
Abdullah Al Othman
Alyazia Al Nahyan
Roudhah Al Mazrouei
Rashed AlAraifi
Safeya Sharif Al Awadhi
Arnaud Rivieren
Mohammed Kazem
Solimar Miller
Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim
Yazan Khalili
Ruqaya Al Hashimi
Dima Abou Zannad
Mays Albeik
Alia Hussain Lootah
Toufic Beyhum
Majd Alloush
Ana Escobar
Alla Abdunabi
Adrian Pepe
Taqwah Al Naqbi
Rawdha Al Ketbi
Eman Al Hashemi
Shamma Al Amri
Said Mhaisen
Ahmed Emad
Lama Alshenaifi
Safeya Sharif
Yosra Emamizadeh
Afraa Al Suwaidi
Sara Al Ahli
Ziad Al Najjar
Ziad Al Najjar is an Emirati artist who completed his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023 on a Creative Honours Scholarship. He has exhibited in solo and dual presentations at NYU Abu Dhabi, Tabari Artspace and Bawa Gallery, and in group exhibitions across the UAE, Europe and the United States. His work is held in international private collections including the Barjeel Art Foundation. He has been commissioned by Dior. His practice and that of his brother Talal Al Najjar — with whom he shares a studio — have been described as sharing passion but diverging in outlook. Where Talal's work tends toward the archival and the distorted, Ziad's moves through painting and the material in a different register.
Asareh Ebrahimpour
Rashed Al Araifi
Asha Juma
Talal Al Najjar
Talal Al Najjar is an Emirati artist based between Los Angeles and Dubai. His interdisciplinary practice moves through research, archiving and distortion — recontextualising material culture, artefacts and imagery through an absurdist lens that uses defamiliarisation and the uncanny to generate new anthropological and material questions. He has shown at Tabari Artspace, Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh, and internationally. He has spoken at the Culture Summit Abu Dhabi and participated in panels on counter-futurisms and new media arts in the Arab world. His brother Ziad Al Najjar is also an artist; they have exhibited together and maintain a shared studio, but their practices diverge significantly in sensibility and method.
Abdullah Dexen
Curators & programme
Curatorial team and exhibition programming.
Nadine Khalil
Nadine Khalil is a Lebanese, Dubai-based art critic, editor and independent curator, and one of the more established critical voices working in the Gulf. Her path into art came through the social sciences — her academic background is in anthropology — followed by nearly two decades in arts publishing. She was editor of the Dubai contemporary-art magazine Canvas (2017–2020) and earlier held senior editorial roles at the Beirut magazines A mag and Bespoke (2010–2016), and her criticism appears across the field's leading titles: Artforum, ArtReview Asia, The Art Newspaper, art-agenda, Ocula, The Brooklyn Rail, Artsy, FT and the Women's Review of Books. Beyond journalism she works as a curator and researcher, currently focused on the body as an expanded site of performance and labour, and collaborates with artists engaging performance, technology and the non-human world. She has authored a series of artist monographs (Paroles d'Artistes) on Lebanese artists including Samir Sayegh and Hanibal Srouji and the late filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, edited The Arts Center: Building a Performing Arts Community on Saadiyat Island (NYU Abu Dhabi, 2023), and contributed to volumes such as Evaporating Suns: Contemporary Myths from the Arabian Gulf (Hatje Cantz, 2023). She advises institutions including the Ishara Art Foundation, Goethe-Institut and the NYUAD Arts Center on editorial strategy, mentors artists in Tashkeel's Critical Practice Programme, and previously served as communications strategist for Ishara Art Foundation (2020–2022). At NIKA Project Space she curated the group exhibition I Can No Longer Produce the Limits of My Own Body.