The team at Canvas shares five shows from around the world to check out for October 2025.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Zifzafa at MUNCH
Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Zifzafa at MUNCH in Oslo brings audiences straight into the centre of the occupied Golan Heights, where the planned edification of thirty wind turbines will forever disrupt the lives of local inhabitants. Abu Hamdan has conceived a guided simulation of the sounds of the area, mixing the cacophony of nature and human tones with the overpowering drum of the wind turbines, while a video work featuring saxophonist Amr Mdah playing from a balcony adds to the aural mapping of what is at stake for communities following these so-called environmental initiatives.
Zifzafa runs from 19 September to 4 January 2026
Bady Dalloul: Self-portrait with a cat I don’t have at Jameel Arts Centre
Self-portrait with a cat I don’t have at Jameel Arts Centre is Bady Dalloul’s first institutional solo show in the UAE. With the title taken from a previous piece, created while the artist was in Tokyo, the exhibition honours the artist’s proclivity for incorporating musings on his life into his artwork. In the exhibition, the personal becomes universal, as people whom the artist has met lend snippets of their own existence to Dalloul’s craft, through a new commission, Age of Empires, as well as previous series entitled Matchbox, along with a recreation of his live/work studio in Dubai.
Self-portrait with a cat I don’t have runs from 20 September to 22 February 2026
SILA . All That is Left to You at Maraya Art Centre
SILA . All That is Left to You is the first collaboration between Maraya Art Centre and 1971 – Design Space, with curation by Cima Azzam and Noor Suhail, joining forces with the founder of Sila exhibitions, Rula Alami. The exhibition spotlights the traditional Palestinian art of tatreez embroidery, revisiting it as both a means of cultural resistance and a tool for supporting oneself financially. Artists including Hazem Harb, Aya Haidar, Samia Halaby, Nada Debs and Katya Traboulsi, among others, showcase their work while bringing this traditional art into the contemporary world, with many of the participating artists collaborating with Inaash Association, an organisation created to empower women through craft in refugee camps in Lebanon.
SILA . All That is Left to You runs from 21 September to 5 January 2026
Michael Rakowitz: Proxies for Poets and Palaces at Stavanger Art Museum
Michael Rakowitz’s latest solo exhibition at Stavanger Art Museum centres the series The invisible enemy should not exist (2007–ongoing), initially created in the wake of the Iraq Museum’s looting following the US invasion. The artist creates and imagined restoration of the reliefs that once existed in what is now Mosul, in the Assyrian Northwest Palace of Kalhu, while visitors are invited to ponder the value placed on cultural artefacts and life during conflict. Also showcased are What dust will rise?, made up of objects and books carved from stone based on the Hessian State Library’s collection in Afghanistan, as well as I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it’s in between I freeze in which Leonard Cohen’s art and music serve as a guide for Rakowitz’s exploration of the crossover between art and politics.
Proxies for Poets and Palaces runs from 27 September to 15 March 2026
Hoda Afshar. Performing the Invisible at musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Performing the Invisible at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac marks Hoda Afshar’s first solo exhibition in France. With a new installation entitled The Fold, Afshar takes on the museum’s collection, revisiting images taken by French psychiatrist Gaëtan de Clérambault in Morocco from 1918 to 1919 during the colonial period, while shedding light on how photographic depictions of the body are shaped and limited by the colonial gaze. Alongside the installation, the Iranian-born artist will also showcase Speak the Wind (2015-20), a previous series exploring wind-related rituals in the Strait of Hormuz.
Performing the Invisible runs from 30 September to 25 January 2026
