Allusive Veil

Allusive Veil is a solo exhibition of paintings by Hisham Sharif at Ayyam Gallery in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, from 23 September to 30 October 2026. It is his first solo exhibition with the gallery and in the UAE.

The gallery lists twenty-two paintings in acrylic on canvas or panel, made in 2025 and 2026, the largest 180 by 140 cm. They include The Mistake, Red Room with a Rothko, Behind the Mirror, Cheetah and Tree, She Calls Me Pinocchio, Moonlight and Solitude. The gallery calls his painterly language "foreign to the region and to his local contemporaries" and cites the influence of nineteenth-century French painting.

Reflective surfaces recur, and the mirror serves as a symbolic motif. Interior scenes give way to exterior moments and animals, drawing on Persian mythology, which the gallery links to his Persian ancestry. "The depiction of the cheetah and the gazelle becomes a recurring theme," the gallery writes.

Sharif (b. 1993) is from Bahrain and initially trained in finance. His first solo exhibition, Frightening the Dark, took place in 2017, and his exhibitions also include Sharif & Sharif in 2022. He won the Al Dana Award at the fiftieth Bahrain Annual Fine Arts Exhibition and a Recognition Award for Outstanding Work at the forty-fifth edition. He has taken part in residencies in New York and Bahrain, and his work is in the collection of the Bahrain National Museum.