Building on the exchange and collaboration of Summer, the Fall 2026 season shifts its attention outward, from voices and conversations between people to the sites, gatherings, and traces that hold memory and everyday life. This season moves between the civic and the intimate: the places we inhabit together, and slower, more solitary practices.

The Fall season moves from the minor to the monumental: from creating a personal zine inside a cassette tape case to exploring Mina Zayed’s fruit and vegetable market as a living archive. Each program circles back to questions of place, memory, and what a space holds onto after it changes.

Returning cornerstone programs continue to anchor the season. A Writing Practice with Sarah Afaneh provides a space to experiment with different forms of writing. Tatreez Circle with Joanna Barakat continues as an ongoing makers' community, working toward a celebratory gathering of makers and thread enthusiasts. Maktaba returns twice this season, featuring thoughtful roundtable discussions where participants co-create a space for reading, learning, and reflection. November brings with it the return of our popular 421 Family Day, which invites families to drop in and make art together. 

Two exhibitions also shape the Fall season. Revelation, the first institutional solo exhibition by Emirati artist Juma Alhaj marks a significant and ambitious evolution in his practice. A culmination of his participation in 421 Arts Campus' Artistic Development Program (ADP), it  explores the themes of reflection, solitude, and inward contemplation.

Archipelago of Whispers, curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr, brings together works by regional and international artists including Aliaskar Abarkas, Ruba Al-Sweel, Farah Al Qasimi, Gizem Karakaş, Yen Chun Lin, Omar Mismar, and Ayman Zedani. It explores alternative infrastructures for knowledge-making such as whispers, murmurs, hums, gossip, and storytelling.

Accompanying Archipelago of Whispers are several public programs, including a Maktaba session where the exhibition’s curators will share insights into their research and curatorial practices along with a two-day studio seminar with Aliaskar Abarkas in which participants will create a collective sound and movement work using their voices along with written passages gathered from 421’s Reading Room. 

This season's programming is designed to encourage a deeper investigation of everyday life, whether it's the objects that surround us or the places we move through. It values observation as much as creation, and asks participants to look past their first impressions and reflexes toward a layered, more intentional way of seeing, making, and engaging with the world around them. 

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Revelation

Juma Alhaj

October 4, 2026 – January 10, 2027

Archipelago of Whispers

Curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr

October 4, 2026 – January 10, 2027