The team at Canvas shares five shows from around the world to check out for November 2025.
A Sounding of Earth at Copenhagen Contemporary
Alia Farid’s exhibition, A Sounding of the Earth, unfolds the intertwined stories of the Gulf, where spiritual heritage meets the realities of extraction, specifically the removal of natural resources such as oil and its impact on culture and landscape. Combining sculpture and film, the artist reflects on how political and industrial powers reshape landscapes and traditions. Her new work, Amulets (2025), transforms ancient symbols of protection using material drawn from oil refinement, while Chibayish (2022/2023) portrays the fragile life of Iraq’s southern marshes. Through these works, Farid maps a territory of endurance and change, revealing how ecology, culture and history remain entangled in cycles of resistance and renewal.
A Sounding of Earth runs until 6 April 2026
Behind the Seen at the Foundation and Museo Nivola
Mona Hatoum’s practice delves into the interplay between body, material and space, questioning the boundries between what is seen and what is concealed. Marked by themes of displacement, control and vulnerability, her works transform familiar domestic and industrial materials into objects of tension and contemplation. In Behind the Seen, the artist revisits motifs of grids and bodily fragments to expose hidden systems of power and human fragility. Bringing together earlier works and new works created during her residency in Sardenia, Hatoum merges craftsmanship with spatial inquiry, prompting viewers to face unsettling forms of perception and presence.
Behind the Seen runs until 2 March 2026
Port Cities: Fragments of Maritime Routes at Beirut Art Center
In collaboration with the British Council Lebanon and the Liverpool Arab Festival, Beirut Art Center presents an exhibition featuring Mohamed Abdelkarim, Laila Hida, Nadia Kaabi-Linke and Siska. Born from residencies in Liverpool in 2024 and revisited in Alexandria, Tunis, Marrakech and Beirut, the works explore ports as sites of memory, migration and trade. Through sound, video, photography and sculpture, the artists reflect on histories of colonialism, environmental impact and urban transformation, tracing fractured maritime routes while imagining new ways to reconnect, remember and recompose the complex relationships between cities and the sea.
Port Cities: Fragments of Maritime Routes runs until 6 December
Post Scriptum at La Ferme du Buisson
Monia Ben Hamouda’s first solo exhibition in France, Post Scriptum, showcases a new body of works, including monumental steel sculptures suspended in space and dusted with spices and various scents. Installed within sand-covered spaces, the works reflect on disappearance and the fragility of memory while affirming the beauty of ambiguity and the materiality of language. Through the delicate balance between presence and erasure, the exhibition invites viewers to contemplate time as both movement and trace.
Post Scriptum runs until 25 January 2026
Sole crushing at Lafayette Anticipations
Sole crushing, a site specific installation by Meriem Bennani, transforms over two hundred flip-flops into a percussive orchestra, producing a composition that mixes symphony symphoyn with riot. Each sole strikes surfaces like a participant in a crowd, evoking protests, stadiums or Moroccan dakka marrakchia ceremonies. Bennani’s work addresses collective experiences, showing how everyday objects can create a unifying pulse. For Lafayette Anticipations, she collaborated with Reda Senhaji (Cheb Runner) on a new soundtrack, designing a site-specific installation that amplifies communal energy, togetherness and the invisible forces that bind individuals.
Sole crushing runs until 8 February 2026
Rave into the Future: Art in Motion at Asian Art Museum
Curated by Naz Cuguoğlu, Rave into the Future celebrates the West Asian diaspora artists in the United States and Europe. The exhibition highlights the dancefloor as a space of joy, resistance and community featuring works by Sahar Khoury, Yasmine Nasser Diaz, Joe Namy, :mentalKLINIK and others. Through multimedia installations, sculptures and performances, artists illuminate themes of community, embodied identity and cultural memory, transforming the space into a reflection on collective movement and healing inspired by West Asia’s rave culture.
Rave into the Future: Art in Motion runs until 12 January 2026
nameless at WIELS
In her first solo exhibition at WIELS, entitled nameless and curated by Dirk Snauwaert, Iranian-born artist Nairy Baghramian engages with the Blomme building’s brutalist and post-industrial architecture to present works that blur the line between form and function. Drawing from biomorphic, industrial and design influences, Baghramian explores the fragile condition of sculptures and objects beyond traditional names and codes. Inspired by avant-garde exiles like Katarzyna Kobro and Isamu Noguchi, her work reflects on displacement, survival and impermanence. The exhibition creates a dialogue between materiality, space and precarity within WIELS’s architectural context.
nameless runs until 1 March 2026
Rays, Ripples, Residue at 421 Arts Campus
Rays, Ripples, Residue marks the 10th anniversary of Abu Dhabi’s 421 Arts Campus, reflecting on a decade of artistic production and exhibition making in the UAE. The exhibition, organised through three curatorial perspectives, traces the development of the local art scene. Munira Al Sayegh highlights foundational influences that have shaped the UAE’s contemporary art scene, Nadine Khalil examines how events persist beyond their occurance, uncovering the traces and memories that continue to haunt out sense of time and Murtaza Vali considers the sun as a symbol of life and commodification. Featuring video, performance, installation and multimedia works, the show highlights on past shifts and sets the stage for the next decade of artistic practice in the region.
Rays, Ripples, Residue runs until 26 April 2026
Inside Paradise at TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art
Palestinian artist Laila Shawa’s Inside Paradise highlights her career across printmaking, installation and activism, reflecting her experiences in Gaza, Beirut and London. The show features works such as her series from the 1990s, Walls of Gaza, Breast Grenade (2019) and Disposable Bodies (2011–13), which confront power, gender and social systems. Shawa’s practice links personal experiences with collective realities and witnessing. The exhibition presents her approach to merging visual traditions with political commentary, showing how her works communicate broader social and political issues through multiple forms.
