Long, shiny hair can be very appealing in its place – yet hair becomes repulsive as soon as it is detached from the head. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising, then, that in an exhibition filled with severed tongues and torn out hearts, the most visceral and unsettling work is a wooden book stand sprouting a thick crop of straight, honey-colored hair. “Zulf” (Brunette) is one of a series of bizarre, humorous and consistently clever works on show at NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, currently hosting international artists’ collective Slavs and Tatars’ latest solo show, “Mirrors for Princes: Both Sides of the Tongue.”

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A woman walking briskly through the gallery’s snaking exhibition layout, paying scant attention to the work around her, stopped suddenly in her tracks at the sight of Saudi artist Ahmed Matar’s photograph “Let It Be Passed,” forcing the lady behind her to swerve wildly in order to avoid a collision. “Wow,” the first woman could be heard to exclaim. Then, “I love it. I love it!” A dramatic reaction to a photograph, maybe, but one that suggests “View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Video, Photography and Mixed Media Art” is managing to reach its viewers. The image, an enormous color shot of two young boys pressed up against a fence on a hill overlooking the Islamic holy city of Mecca – a sea of minarets lit up like candles in the night – was part of an exhibition originally dreamt up by FotoFest.

Read More: A Panoramic Shot of Arab Art

Under the patronage of Qatar Museums Chairperson HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) opened “Qajar Women: Images of Women in 19th-Century Iran” exhibition today [April 8th]. Running until 16 June 2016, this new temporary exhibition showcases a wide variety of artworks from the Qajar period, all of which feature Persian women as the main subject. This exhibition demonstrates the importance of women in the art of 19th-century Iran and how this continues to inspire contemporary artists.

Read More: Qatar Museums Opens ‘Qajar Women: Images of Women in 19th-Century Iran’ Exhibition

An exhibition on prominent 18th Century South Indian Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan opened yesterday [September 29th] at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) Special Exhibitions Gallery. “This exhibition aims to tell the story of Tipu Sultan, a famous South Indian ruler, statesman, patron of the arts, poet, diplomat, a key figure in the late 18th century India,” William Greenwood, MIA Curator for Central Islamic Lands explained during a press tour yesterday. Tipu Sultan’s formidable reputation and strong self-image makes him an extraordinary subject in an exhibition where art, objects and narrative combine to examine the past.

Read More: Museum of Islamic Art Exhibition Unveils Tipu Sultan’s Heroics

Geometric Aljamia: a cultural transliteration is an exhibition that explores the connections between Europe, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East by addressing the fundamental geometry embedded in two-dimensional art. Aljamia is the adaptation of the Arabic script to transcribe texts in European languages. In the past, Aljamia manuscripts played a significant role in preserving Islam and the Arabic language in the West, especially in Andalusia. By understanding the visual arts as a transliteration of one form of thinking to another, this exhibition revisits the ongoing impact of Islamic art, science and philosophy in the modern world.

Read More: Geometric Aljamia Links Many Cultures

Arab artist Kamal Boullata was born in Occupied Jerusalem in 1942, but has lived in exile in America and Europe since he was 18. Despite his Western art education, he has kept in touch with his roots by doing extensive research on Islamic and Modern Arab art, and has written several essays and books on Islamic, Byzantine and Palestinian art. His latest body of work, Bilqis, named after the queen of Sheba, seamlessly combines Western and Islamic abstraction. The series, comprising five triptychs is inspired by the Quranic legend of the queen’s visit to the court of King Solomon, where she mistook the glass floor for a sheet of water and lifted up her skirt to avoid getting it wet. The paintings are essentially about recreating the transparency and spatial ambiguity in visual perception that the queen had experienced.

Read More: Symmetry Inspired by Architecture