This exhibition is also is the first time these two artists have been compared in a scholarly fashion, which is important, not least because Picasso was a notoriously difficult character. His friendship with ­Giacometti seems to reveal a lot of respect for the younger’s talents.

Clearly trying to cause public debate, Omari will no doubt be successful in that, because this is not the kind of show that a viewer can pass over without comment but unfortunately, the artwork does not shed light on what it is like for these people, forced to leave their homeland with whatever they can carry and fall victim to traffickers, crooks and a whole corrupt system.

It is testament to the Lebanese artist’s mastery of the medium that, as his viewers take in each work as a whole, its stories reveal themselves easily. In his latest show, the tales are heartbreaking realities of our time.

Vikram Divecha is one of five artists who will represent the UAE at the Venice Biennale next month in Italy. He is also one of three UAE-based artists exhibiting artworks at the ongoing Sharjah Biennial. Yet his work is rarely found in a gallery.

"My interest is not what things look like, but why they look like that," he says. "I don’t want to represent something or reproduce something we are already familiar with. I want to be involved with the internal structure of the material."