There’s something about Alserkal Avenue: the grey warehouses hiding galleries and studios, the concrete walkable streets where matcha lattes seem to grow on bushes that sends out a mating call to Dubai’s cool kids. And somewhere between the thrifting stalls and sourdough-tasting workshops arrives an experience that can only be described as the city’s most culturally charged weekend: the Quoz Arts Fest.
Running from January 24–25, this year’s festival leans into art that blurs the lines between sound, movement, and architecture. From a cocoon-like tape structure you can physically climb through to suspended colour gradients floating above the Avenue, Quoz Arts Fest 2026 is about how art moves, feels, and meets you exactly where you are.
Here’s your guide to what not to miss:
TAPE Dubai — Numen/For Use
For the first time ever in Dubai, internationally acclaimed collective Numen/For Use brings its cult-favourite exhibit to Quoz. Built entirely from layers of elastic packing tape, the installation transforms the brutalist space into a walkable, cocoon-like structure that shifts with your movement. Some parts are sculpture, architecture, and the rest, a playground, TAPE dissolves the boundary between audience and artwork. You’re not a spectator, you are the piece.
Where: Concrete
WEBS — Faustin Linyekula
WEBS unfolds inside the TAPE installation. Linyekula, the dancer, choreographer, and storyteller, uses movement, text, and image to explore solidarity, rupture, and the act of rebuilding. It’s a performance that feels intimate and urgent, shaped by the space around it.
Interval — Tomislav Topic
Suspended above Alserkal Avenue’s central passageway, it’s hard to miss this one. Two elongated V-shaped forms hover overhead, not quite touching, never fully pulling apart. As sunlight shifts and crowds pass through, the layered colour gradients transform, making a simple walk feel hallucinatory. Topic’s work wants you to slow down, even if just for a few steps.
Where: Lane 5
You ain’t never been blue! — Nasri Sayegh
Part of Sayegh’s “Exquisite Landscapes” series, this large-scale facade work treats landscapes as slates for emotional revelation. Fragmented skies, trembling horizons, and layered imagery come together in a composition shaped by memory, displacement, and care. Drawing on childhood recollections, war-scarred geographies, and dreamlike terrains, the piece proposes wonder as a quiet act of resistance, especially in a time marked by erasure and ecological anxiety. It’s the art piece you might not understand, but for some reason can’t rush past.
Where: First Al Khail Corner Facade
Aichoucha — Khalil Hentati
Live concert meets documentary filmmaking. “Aichoucha” is an immersive audiovisual performance that blends electronic music with filmed travels across Tunisia. Premiered at Dream City 2023, the piece celebrates Tunisian musical heritage through an electrified lens.
Floe — Jean-Baptiste André
Floe features a mobile structure designed by Vincent Lamouroux that shifts perspective depending on where you stand. As performers move across and within it, the work becomes a conversation between body, form, and public space; dynamic and far from stagnant.
Where: Main Lane
Unfolding in Blue — Mawaheb
One of the most powerful exhibitions at the festival, “Unfolding in Blue”, is a multi-sensory journey created with Mawaheb artists. Translating literally to “talents,” the Mawaheb collective is a spotlight on art made by people of determination. Using touch, scent, writing, and reflection, the exhibition explores blue not just as a colour, but as a shared emotional experience, calm, vulnerability, depth, and connection. Designed with accessibility at its core, the show invites visitors to slow down, participate, and experience art beyond just what you see.
Where: WH35
Play Back in Time — Strawberry Fields
Quoz Arts Fest has always been family-friendly, and this year’s kids’ programme leans into nostalgia and creativity. Designed for children aged 2–8, “Play Back in Time” is a vintage-inspired play warehouse filled with classic games, movement-based activities, and open-ended making, offering parents a much-needed breather and kids a space to roam.
Where: WH45
The 2026 edition of the Quoz Art Festival is all about art that meets you where you are, mid-walk, mid-thought and mid-conversation.