I arrived in Dubai expecting the usual—glittering towers, record-setting malls, and hotels that look engineered to outshine the sun. But this time, I wasn’t here for the superlatives. I wanted the city beneath the spectacle: its artistic heart, the creative pulse often overshadowed by grandeur. So, I stepped off the familiar tourist map and followed an art-and-culture trail that led me to Expo City, the newly launched House of Arts, and the luminous world of Dhai Dubai.
Expo City: Where the future still echoes
My trail began at Expo City Dubai, a place I’d only ever associated with that one monumental year when the world gathered under the domed grandeur of Al Wasl Plaza. Returning now, I expected the afterglow to have dimmed. It hadn’t. Instead, the site felt distilled—quieter, but more intentional, humming with a different kind of energy: creativity instead of crowds.
Walking through its broad pedestrian avenues, I realised how much Dubai’s cultural identity is tied to reinvention. Expo City is no frozen monument to a past event; it’s morphing into a living cultural campus.
Expo City | Neeta Lal
I lingered inside pavilions repurposed into educational spaces, community studios, and art showcases. It struck me how the architecture itself seemed to invite contemplation—clean lines, sunlit courtyards, and a sense of civic openness rare for cities built on spectacle. It felt like a place built not just to impress, but to express.
But the real centrepiece awaited at the heart of it all—House of Arts.
House of Arts: Where creativity breathes
The newly launched House of Arts sits quietly, almost modestly, for a city famous for announcing attractions with the roar of fireworks. But its ambition is deep, not loud. This isn’t a gallery meant to dazzle so much as a sanctuary for process—for the slow burn of creation.
Inside, the space unfurled in warm light and neutral tones, letting the art speak without shouting. Studios buzzed with movement: a ceramicist shaping clay into vessels inspired by Emirati landscapes; a group of teenagers sketching modern takes on traditional motifs; a resident artist layering canvases with paint the colour of desert dusk. I wandered through these workshops with the sense of being gently pulled into a living ecosystem of creativity.
What I loved most was its openness. Visitors weren’t just spectators. We were invited to sit, to touch, to try. I spent half an hour in a printmaking workshop, carving lines into soft linoleum while an instructor explained how traditional Emirati stories influence contemporary design. It felt grounding—an antidote to the curated perfection often sold to Dubai’s visitors.
In the House of Arts café, sipping saffron tea while musicians rehearsed a fusion set nearby, I realised how rare it is for a city to create space not just for cultural display but for cultural emergence. This, I thought, is the Dubai I didn’t know.
Dhai Dubai: The city lit from within
But it was Dhai Dubai that truly shifted my perception of the city.
The Emirati-led light art festival had returned to Al Wasl Plaza for its second edition, and stepping into it at dusk felt like entering a luminous dream. The theme—Light Influences Life—was brought to life in ways that tugged at my senses. The plaza’s iconic dome shimmered with 360-degree projections that flowed like living murals, turning the sky into a canvas of colour and motion.
Seven new works by Emirati artists anchored the festival this year, each exploring light not just as a medium but as a metaphor. One installation cast rippling shadows inspired by the Arabian Gulf’s tides; another transformed sand patterns into animated geometry. Soundscapes drifted through the plaza—tones that felt like the meeting of old desert rhythms and contemporary electronic beats.
What moved me most was how personal the pieces felt. Emirati artists were telling stories—about heritage, identity, memory, and modernity—and we were invited not to decode them but to feel them. People wandered slowly, heads tilted up, children tracing light with outstretched fingers, elders sitting still as the projections washed over them. The experience was communal, almost meditative.
Workshops dotted the edges of the plaza. I stepped into one where artists explained how they translate traditional Emirati weaving patterns into digital artworks. Another session unpacked how light can be used to explore emotional narratives. It struck me how rarely we consider the emotional geography of cities—and yet here was Dubai illuminating it, literally.
The Dubai hidden in plain sight
By the time I left Dhai Dubai, I realised I’d spent three days in one of the world’s most ostentatious cities without encountering a single gold-plated anything. Instead, I’d wandered through the quiet, thoughtful, deeply human corners of Dubai’s cultural imagination.
I’d seen a side of the city where light becomes a storyteller; art emerges in the making, not just the showcasing and heritage is interpreted through hands, voices, and glowing installations. It made me realise that Dubai’s artistic heritage isn’t hidden—it’s simply overshadowed by the megastructures everyone expects to see. But follow an art trail like this, and the city reshapes itself. Suddenly, it feels less like a gallery of wonders and more like a living, breathing cultural organism.
And for the first time in all my visits, I felt like I’d actually met Dubai—not the spectacle, but the soul.
Neeta Lal is a senior journalist, and writes on art, culture, travel and gastronomy in South Asia and beyond.
