Shows to See in March 2026

unbecoming at Georgetown University Art Galleries

unbecoming acts as a survey of Syrian-born and New York-based artist Diana Al-Hadid’s painting and sculpture oeuvre, calling into question how ideas surrounding the feminine and its attributes are shaped. Al-Hadid explores material and its transformation under her hands as an exercise that can teach women that being “unbecoming” can hold a special form of strength, subverting gendered expectations around female behaviour. These themes, brought to light in this exhibition curated by Dr Rachel Winter and organised by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, are often disregarded in Al-Hadid’s practice. The female and source materials, including Allegory of Chastity (1475) by Hans Melling and Medusa of Greek mythology, are timeless references for the artist, demonstrating the power of mythology and historical narratives in shaping ideas of womanhood.

unbecoming runs until 12 April

Lin May Saeed at Kunsthalle Bern

The exhibition of Lin May Saeed brings renewed attention to the artist’s exploration of the relationship between humans and animals. Working across sculpture and drawing, Saeed consistently positioned animals as central figures rather than secondary motifs. Many of her works envision scenes in which humans and animals coexist without hierarchy, suggesting alternative ways of living together. Using accessible materials such as Styrofoam, she developed a distinctive sculptural language that combines references to mythology, religion and activism. Presented after the artist’s passing, the exhibition reflects the enduring relevance of her practice. 

Lin May Saeed runs until 10 May 

Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom at the Bell at Brown University

Commissioned by The Bell / Brown Arts Institute, in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary, Kunstinstitut Melly and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom is the latest exhibition by artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Co-curated by Kate Kraczon and Thea Quiray Tagle, the show centres on the poem Enemy of the Sun (1970) by Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim, which highlights the link between political prisoners in Palestine and Black political prisoners in the USA. Sound and video installation fill the space, with materials such as concrete, weathered steel and fabric alluding to the architecture of incarceration. Within this space of restricted freedom, the artists put forth the arts, whether poetry, music or visual arts, as a means of survival when expression is suppressed.

Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom runs until 31 May

Psychic Repair at SCAD

Psychic Repair is Farah Al Qasimi’s solo exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art, which combines her hallmark highly saturated photography installations with music videos staged across the vitrines that line the museum’s exterior and one of its galleries. Through images inspired by the iconography of girlhood and womanhood in both the United Arab Emirates and the United States, alongside snippets of song and spoken word in Al Qasimi’s video works, the works explore how self-presentation and beauty/fashion culture alter our perceived self-worth. Images are layered, evoking storefront displays and internet pop-up ads. Silently present, these external powers influence the very core of one’s being and dictate our behaviour, often through rituals of self-care and presentation that shape our view of the world, what we perceive, and more fundamentally, how we identify ourselves. 

Psychic Repair runs until 7 June

Of Thread and Stone at the New Taipei City Art Museum

Of Thread and Stone offers an investigation into material culture and memory, examining how fibres, stones and other fragments encode histories and shape cultural narratives. Focusing on the industrial development of New Taipei City, including its mining heritage and textile production, the exhibition brings together objects, archives and artworks that reflect the overlapping experience of labour, migration and urban transformation. Works by Forensic Architecture, Slavs and Tatars, Rayyane Tabet and more illuminate how objects, whether humble or monumental, embody stories of resistance and the collective memory over time. 

Of Thread and Stone runs until 14 June 

Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go at Tabakalera

In the current exhibition at Tabakalera, Zineb Sedira’s work engages with migration and the transmission of histories. The show takes its title from African-American gospel singer Marion Williams at the 1969 Pan-African Festival of Algiers (PANAF), a landmark event in newly independent Algeria that brought together global liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. The show is organised into four scenes, including a video assembled from found militant film negatives, the photomontage and object series For a Brief Moment the World Was on Fire… and We Have Come Back (2019) and We Have Come Back (2019). Works by artists Nabil Djedouani, William Klein, Jason Oddy and Algerian photographer Boubaker Adjali come together with materials from Equatorial Guinea and the Canary Islands to create a complementary cross-cultural dialogue spanning time and geography. 

Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go runs until 14 June 

Circles and Storytellers at the Mosaic Rooms

Mosaic Rooms reopens with Circles and Storytellers, the first UK solo exhibition by artist Bouchra Khalili.  The show brings together a mixed-media installation, Circles and Storytellers (2023), and the film The Public Storyteller (2024), both of which culminate the artist’s ten-year research into the underexamined past of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes (MTA) and its theatre groups, Al Assifa and Al Halaka. Operating in the 1970s, these groups of Maghrebi undocumented workers championed social justice and creative freedom, including the overlooked 1970 presidential run for an MTA member, Djelalli Kamal. Through circular arrangements and performative gestures, Khalili positions storytelling as a means to nurture community ties and new forms of civic engagement. 

Circles and Storytellers runs until 14 June 

Souffle Continu and Sunflowers at IMMA

Tarek Atoui’s solo presentation at IMMA in Dublin runs in two parts, with Souffle Continu presented in the Chapel of the museum, and Sunflowers taking place in the traditional gallery spaces. Continuing Atoui’s exploration of sound and material across cultures, Sunflowers delves into the art of Korean drumming with a body of work derived from the rhythms and materials of the music genre. Souffle Continu sprawls across the Chapel’s interior, with multiple Wind Houses erected throughout. Conceived as both areas for listening to sound and for performing it, combining sight, hearing and touch to produce a multisensory experience exploring how sound can be experienced on different levels, by people with varying sensory abilities. The network of tubes running across the space is linked to a computer, air blower and organ modules that are the product of Atoui’s research into the experience of sound for those who are hearing impaired.

Souffle Continu runs until 19 April and Sunflowers runs until 19 July

Susan Hefuna at Bündner Kunstmuseum

For the first time in Switzerland, the Grisons Museum of Fine Arts presents a comprehensive exhibition by artist Susan Hefuna, developed in collaboration with the artist to showcase the breadth of her artistic practice. Hefuna’s work explores the interplay of time and perception, examining the tension between public and private spaces while revealing subjective experiences of cities, landscapes and cultural exchange. The exhibition features works such as her architectural drawings, photographic series, immersive installations and performance-based projects, with a particular focus on the landscapes of Graubünden and its connections to the wider world.

Susan Hefuna runs until 26 July

Panorama: Dreams and Places at Istanbul Modern

Curated by Çelenk Bafra and Demet Yıldız Dinçer, Panorama: Dreams and Places showcases works by 18 artists from 2010 onwards, highlighting the story of lens-based and contemporary photographic art in Türkiye. To these artists, photography becomes not only a means through which to portray the realities of the world, but a new artistic medium with the ability to distort and deconstruct lived experiences to create landscapes of emotion and imagined spaces. In response to the unrest in the world and the political upheaval facing them, artists such as Larissa Araz, Emre Baykal, Zeynep Kayan and Cemre Yeşil Gönenli, among others, seek to bend reality rather than depart from it. Together, the artists demonstrate the myriad ways an image can be formed, whether through archival images, new technologies, or installation work.

Panorama: Dreams and Places runs until 18 October

New Humans: Memories of the Future at the New Museum

The New Museum inaugurates its expanded building with the group show New Humans: Memories of the Future, an exhibition that exaximes how artists have imagined humanity and rapid technological transformation. Spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the show brings together more than 150 artists, writers, architects and filmmakers who speculate on what humans might become. Works by Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Samia Halaby, Monira Al Qadiri and more, imagine hybrid bodies, artificial intelligence and unknown life forms. Moving beyond the field of art, the show also incorporates speculative architecture and sci-fi perspectives, presenting artistic practice as a space for collective imagination. 

New Humans: Memories of the Future runs until TBC