A new exhibition at Cultural Foundation explores Shezad Dawood’s work, with films, paintings and ideas shaped by ecology and future worlds

The Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation has opened a new exhibition. Skin of Dreams by Shezad Dawood has opened at Cultural Foundation, marking the artist’s first mid-career retrospective. It pulls together more than 15 years of work, and you feel that range as you move through it. One moment you are looking at film, the next at painting, then something more immersive. It keeps you on your toes.

Curated by Jessica Cerasi, the exhibition lays out the full scope of Dawood’s practice. He is a London-based artist who works across mediums, often drawing from architecture, ecology and science. As a result, his work does not sit neatly in one box. Instead, it moves between ideas, linking the past with what might come next.

That thread runs through the exhibition. It brings older traditions into conversation with contemporary thinking, while also asking bigger questions about the future. There is an environmental edge to it, but it never feels like a lecture. Rather, it invites you to look a little closer and make your own connections.

There are a few standout moments. The show includes Dawood’s “openers” works, which act as entry points into his wider world. It also premieres the final two episodes of his ten-part film series, Leviathan Cycle. The series imagines a future shaped by climate change, and seeing it here, at the end of a long-running project, feels significant.

Then there is the painting. This is the first time Dawood’s painting practice has been presented in depth to the public, and it adds another layer to the exhibition. It grounds the work, even as the ideas stretch outward. So yes, it looks back over more than a decade of work. But it does not feel like a retrospective stuck in the past. Instead, it feels open, still evolving, and very much alive.

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