This May, a special edition of Art Dubai marks 20 years of the fair. The gallery programme brings together long-standing participants alongside a new generation of galleries, reflecting both its history and continued evolution. Spanning London, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Paris, Kuwait, Ramallah and Beirut, these highlighted presentations across contemporary, modern and digital practices engage directly with the present moment through political, social and cultural perspectives. 

Rooted in the region and connected globally, the galleries featured here balance discovery with recognition, from emerging voices to rarely seen and newly commissioned works. Presentations are ambitious and considered and there is a strong emphasis on material and conceptual experimentation throughout.

Ab-Anbar Gallery

London-based Ab-Anbar returns to Art Dubai for the first time since 2019 with a tightly conceived presentation conceived almost as a museum storehouse. Bringing together Douglas Abdell (Lebanon), Dima Srouji (Palestine), Jananne Al-Ani (Iraq) and Majid Fathizadeh (Iran), the presentations explore themes of memory, displacement and cultural continuity that resonate so strongly across the region. Abdell anchors the presentation with rarely seen works from 1980s New York shown alongside his Phoenician stone sculptures from the 1990s, reclaiming ancient symbols through a contemporary lens.

Efie Gallery 

Dubai-based Efie Gallery presents a multi-generational dialogue across photography, textile, sculpture and archival practice, featuring Yaw Owusu, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kelani Abass, Abdoulaye Konaté, Samuel Fosso and J K Bruce-Vanderpuije. Rooted in shared material languages, the presentation explores memory, identity and the circulation of images across time and place. At its centre, Campos-Pons offers a powerful meditation on migration, spirituality and belonging. She was also a participant in Desert X Alula 2026 and will showcase her work in the Sixty-First Venice Biennale, themed ‘In Minor Keys’.

Tabari Artspace 

Dubai-based Tabari Artspace presents ‘In Within Me’, an exhibition bringing together four artists across generations and geographies: Rema Ghuloum, Randa Maddah, Irene Scheinmann and Hashel Al Lamki. Spanning painting, sculpture, etching and mixed media, the presentation explores interior worlds made visible. Randa Maddah’s work stands out for its evocative blend of folklore, political tension and dreamlike imagery, with figures shifting between human, animal and vegetal forms across painting and sculpture. Her works include a triptych of oil paintings exploring femininity and folklore, alongside handmade clay sculptures. 

Galerie Frank Elbaz

Marking its debut at Art Dubai Special Edition, Galerie Frank Elbaz brings a cohesive exploration of materiality through works by Sheila Hicks, Kenjiro Okazaki and Machiko Ogawa. Bringing together abstract and three-dimensional practices across textiles, sculpture and ceramics, the presentation foregrounds the dialogue between texture, form and process. Hicks’ textile works resonate alongside Ogawa’s porcelain pieces, enriched with silica sand, feldspar and frit glaze, while Okazaki’s sculptural language further extends this engagement with material transformation. These works evoke a shared sensibility of natural forces and elemental processes together.

Pinksummer

Pinksummer, founded in Genoa in 2000, presents ‘Poetic Cosmos of the Breath’ by Berlin-based Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno. Known for work that spans art, science and ecology, Saraceno explores new ways of living with and sensing our environment. Inspired by early solar balloon experiments, this video captures a lightweight, solar-powered dome as it lifts into the air at dawn. Made from simple materials, foil, sandbags and human coordination, the structure rises through heat alone, creating a quiet, shimmering spectacle without the use of machines or electricity. 

Gallery Isabelle

Gallery Isabelle presents Raed Yassin’s ‘Dancing, Smoking, Kissing series’ (2013–2026), Fereydoun Ave’s domestic flower vase paintings and Mohammed Kazem’s depictions of Hassan Sharif’s studio interior. A dedicated focus is given to Hashel Al Lamki’s ‘Part-Time Lovers’ series, which was first exhibited at Sharjah Biennial 16. The series of paintings continues his exploration of layered cultural references and shifting relationships between environment and identity. Two large-scale works from the series have since been acquired by The Guggenheim.

Meem Gallery 

Meem Gallery is a Dubai-based gallery presenting a solo exhibition by Dia Al-Azzawi, bringing together a selection of his modern and contemporary works. Whilst his modern works revolve around oil on canvas and drawings, her contemporary works shift toward acrylics on canvas. The presentation highlights the evolution of her painterly practice, moving between mediums while maintaining a consistent exploration of form, colour and expressive composition.

Gallery One

Gallery One brings both contemporary and modern presentations to this special edition. Their modern presentation traces a Palestinian artistic lineage shaped by Cairo’s academic traditions, bringing together works by Kamel Al Moghanni, Samira Badran, Tayseer Barakat, Abdul Rahman Al Muzayyen, Nabil Anani and Amjad Ghannam. Ghannam’s ‘This Is Not the Third World’ engages with Western-centric narratives of conflict and representation, questioning how empathy, violence and artistic value are framed through global media discourse. In this series, Ghannam reinterprets existing works from the Arab world through a visual language informed by Picasso, a reference rooted in a formative personal encounter with his work during imprisonment, where art became an act of survival, testimony and resistance.

Franco Noero Gallery

Based in Turin, Franco Noero Gallery features four artists: Mario Garcia Torres, Jason Dodge, Olga Tamaribuchi and Rami Farook. Rami Farook’s practice stands at a reflective juncture within this presentation, shaped by his early beginnings as a painter and his later expansion into curatorial and community-focused work. Based in Dubai, he has been instrumental in fostering artistic dialogue through his studio at Alserkal Avenue, which functions as a space for exchange and collaboration. His practice remains closely tied to the city, often expressed through intimate, small-scale drawings and paintings that emerge from moments of personal observation and contemplation.

Taymour Grahne Projects 

Taymour Grahne Projects brings a solo presentation of new works by Emirati-born artist Roudhah Al Mazrouei (b. 2003, Al Ain, UAE). Her multidisciplinary practice spans painting, public art, film, sculpture and printmaking. In this new series of paintings for the fair she reflects on the dramatic terrain of the Northern Emirates, the rugged landscape of her childhood where she recalls spending time among palm trees and farmland, shaping a deeply personal visual language rooted in memory and place.