Artsy has picked five exhibitions at small and rising galleries to watch this November, spanning London, Cologne, New York, Oslo and Scottsdale. The monthly roundup, published on 3 November, leans toward firsts and debuts: a European solo debut in Cologne, a second New York show for a Peruvian textile artist, and a four-artist group show in London that treats the line between life and death as its subject.

In London, Dubai gallery Tabari presents "Afterglow: From the Residue of a Departed Sun" at No. 9 Cork Street through 21 November. Four artists — Maitha Abdalla, Omar Kholeif, Mohamed Monaiseer and Randa Maddah — work across painting, spoken word, installation and sculpture, drawing on Emirati folk narrative, the African trickster myth and Islamic metaphysics. Monaiseer contributes delicate, constellation-like botanical paintings on cotton, while Abdalla paints gestural scenes in which animal and human forms merge.

In Cologne, American painter Tony Huynh opens his first solo show in Europe, "Heaven or Las Vegas", at Galerie Christian Lethert from 6 November to 18 December. His small oil paintings on wood borrow from outsider art and Japanese printmaking, picturing quiet, slightly lonely scenes — a woman in a blue dress reading, a cow in a field, a child with a toboggan — in a restrained palette.

The remaining three picks are Ana Teresa Barboza's "A Message From Water" at NUNU Fine Art in New York (6 November–9 January), built from alpaca wool, Peruvian cotton, agave fibre, bronze and photography around a journey from the Utcubamba Valley to Gocta Waterfall; Peter Mohall's "När blommorna blommar" at QB Gallery in Oslo (through 29 November), where vases of flowers sit on rocks in deliberately artificial, oversaturated landscapes; and Quim Bové's "Levitation" at Bonner David Galleries in Scottsdale (5 November–19 December), bold pigment, acrylic and resin works pairing target-like patterns with gestural splashes.