Prajakta Potnis, Still Life (detail), diptych, 2019-20, pencil, acrylic and emulsion on lanaquarelle paper, 30 x 22 inches – Courtesy: Project 88, Mumbai
Art Dubai’s expanded programme for the 16th edition is developed in close collaboration with local and international cultural partners and reaffirms Art Dubai’s role as an important meeting point for the Global South’s creative industries and leaders. We have always been building a cultural ecosystem around Art Dubai, therefore alongside the commercial side of the fair, we develop collaborative projects fostering the growth of UAE art scene through international cultural exchange.
The core of the fair’s not-for-profit programme is Art Dubai Commission – a platform that invites local and international artists to produce site-specific works at the fair. Commissions for 2023 will juggle topics that centre around critical thought, identity and craft. Daily performances will include food-based experiences based on the themes of community, celebration and connection. The programme is developed in close collaboration with our gallery partners and several institutions that play a key role in supporting artistic production in South Asia. These organisations include Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, Ishara Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and Samdani Art Foundation. Featured artists from the participating galleries will include Prajakta Potnis (Project 88), Rathin Barman (Experimenter), Gunjan Kumar (Exhibit 320), Anoli Perera and Tayeba Begum Lipi (Shrine Empire).
421, Abu Dhabi’s respected independent platform that supports emerging artists, is collaborating with Art Dubai to present a group exhibition curated by UAE-based artist and researcher Dania Al Tamimi and will pose the question ‘does time move through you, or do you move through time?’. Artistically versatile, Tamimi co-founded Rummān Collective, an online platform for emerging artists, and is a curatorial coordinator at Dirwaza Curatorial Lab in Abu Dhabi. Her own artistic practice is multidisciplinary and amplified by intimacy and playful irony. In this group show, Tamimi will explore time as the binding element of the biography of objects, the active archive of lives and the solidifying catalyst of experiences through various media.
The second edition of the fair’s recently launched section Art Dubai Digital is curated by Singapore-based educator and arts writer Clara Che Wei Peh and will present a 360-degree snapshot of the digital art landscape. Today boundaries between physical and digital, art and design, commercial brands and art institutions seem to be collapsing. A crossover space for participants with innovative new media programmes, Art Dubai Digital is designed to reflect this transforming environment. It will present a range of digital platforms living in virtual art spaces, artist collectives, hybrid institutional models, and more traditional galleries. Among them Lian Foundation, established by private collector, patron and expert in Blockchain Technology Fiorenzo Manganiello; 6529 with their decentralized Open Metaverse project; and UAE First Immersion, a presentation of new artworks by some of the leading names in crypto art, produced after they visited the UAE for the first time in November 2022, presented in collaboration with Morrow Collective.
Our signature annual Global Art Forum (GAF), commissioned by curator, cultural critic and writer Shumon Basar, always carefully blends issues of society and culture. The 16th edition’s theme “Predicting the Present”, is rooted in the idea of our relationship with past, present and future. Within this, Shumon poses the question ‘if it’s the end of history and the end of the future, what happens next?
Art Dubai’s 2023 edition will also feature a series of Collector and Modern Talks, focusing on current trends in private and corporate collecting and patronage, decolonisation of the Middle East and North African art-hostorical canon. In collaboration with the fair, Christie’s will host its first Dubai edition of the annual Art+Tech summit, a one-day conference on the role of emerging technologies in the art world.
More details of Art Dubai’s programme will be announced in January 2023.
