Featuring over 500 artists from over ninety galleries hailing from more than forty countries, Art Dubai is a sizeable affair. Housed a stone’s throw from the manmade Palm Jumeirah island, it promises an unprecedented selection of international art, celebrating home grown spaces such as The Third Line and farther well-established spots such as Dhoomimal Gallery (from New Dehli, the oldest gallery in India). Alongside the traditional booth set-up Art Dubai has also made efforts to ramp up its non-commercial and thematic presentations.
This year sees the inaugural edition of Bawwaba (meaning “gateway” in Arabic), curated by French-Cameroonian curator Élise Atangana. This new section focuses on ten solo presentations by artists from, based in, or focused on a rather broad geographical area: the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia and Latin America, addressing themes of global migration, socioeconomic structures and identity.
Meanwhile, the Residents programme, co-curated by São Paulo–based curator and artistic director of art space Pivô, Fernanda Brenner and Abu Dhabi-based Munira Al Sayegh, has invited twelve artists represented by and based in Latin America to immerse themselves in Emirati culture for four to eight weeks. The resulting work is exhibited at the fair.
