Charlie Koolhaas: City Lust Dubai

For the first time in Dubai, internationally acclaimed artist, photographer, and writer Charlie Koolhaas presents her complete oeuvre—spanning photography, books, sculpture, and fashion—at Jossa, Alserkal Avenue.

This landmark exhibition situates Koolhaas’ twenty-year relationship with Dubai within her broader artistic practice, known for challenging conventions of photography and extending the medium into objects, garments, and immersive spatial experiences. Visitors will encounter her large-scale photographic works, sculptural “photo-objects,” fashion experiments from her Foto-Couture series, and selections from her internationally published books.

Koolhaas’ practice is rooted in her exploration of global urbanism, multiculturalism, and the lived realities of cities in transformation. Since 2005 she has documented Dubai’s rapid development, layering the city’s architecture, social fabric, and shifting landscapes into an evolving visual archive. This exhibition offers audiences the rare chance to experience these works in Dubai itself, where many of her earliest and most recent photographs were created.

The show highlights the artist’s distinctive approach: collapsing boundaries between photography and other mediums. In Koolhaas’ work, an image might become a garment, a book might transform into an installation, and the gallery itself becomes a site for dialogue about how technology, migration, and architecture shape contemporary life.