Announcing the first details of the Art Dubai 2025 programme, featuring performances, site-specific installations and newly commissioned artworks by leading international names and the region’s most exciting creative talent.

The programme also features an extensive talks and conference programme, with highlights including the Global Art Forum titled ‘The New New Normal’, daily Collector and Artist Talks, and the second edition of Art Dubai’s Digital Summit, convening some of those shaping the global digital landscape.

Education 

This year marks the 5th edition of the A.R.M Holding Children Programme which features a collaboration between two artists for the first time: Peju Alatise, a contemporary African artist who represented Nigeria at the 2017 Venice Biennale; and Alia Hussain Lootah, an Emirati artist, educator and co-founder of Medaf Studio in Dubai. Launching at Art Dubai before expanding in schools across all seven Emirates, their co-produced programme celebrates local ecosystems and explores the cultural significance of water in the UAE’s landscapes, guiding children to examine our essential connection with this crucial resource and its creative applications in art.

Commissions and site-specific installations

Leading international artists will present a series of site-specific works and interventions at this year’s fair.

The programme will feature a series of performances by Mexican artist Héctor Zamora, with performers interacting with terracotta objects and engaging with questions of human culture and social dynamics. Performances at Art Dubai will be complemented by a site-specific installation by the artist at Alserkal Avenue. This marks the start of a new multi-year partnership between the two organisations, co-commissioning artists whose practices are rooted in performance.

Ania Soliman will present Kahraba, a monumental site-specific installation taking its title from the Arabic for ‘electricity’. Created in response to Beirut’s ongoing energy crisis, the work traces complex interconnections between technology, nature and memory. Consisting of five-metre-high canvases that blend technological and organic motifs captured in a series of performative acts involving artificial and real plants being thrown onto the canvases. 

Total Arts by The Courtyard (consisting of artists Fereydoun Ave, Shaqayeq Arabi, and Dariush Zandi) will unveil Reconstructed Landscape, marking the first collaborative outdoor public display by the artist trio since 2009. Their installation weaves together fragments from the mountains and urban environments of the UAE to create a reimagined terrain.

A series of experiential installations using digital technologies will explore the complexity of our relationship with technology. Data and kinetic artist BREAKFAST will present Carbon Wake, an interactive kinetic installation that uses real-time energy data to visualise the impact of our collective choices on the environment. Digital artist Jacopo Di Cera will present Retreat, a poignant reflection on the climate crisis with a multi-screen installation, new media studio Ouchhh Studio will return with MOTHEREARTH, a large-scale AI-driven sculpture that turns raw climate data into an evocative sensory experience, while Hybrid Experience, a collective of artists, engineers and creatives based in Dubai, will present a large-scale kaleidoscope inviting audiences to visualise their dreams using artificial intelligence.

Partner Programme

Common Grounds is a new exhibition from Dubai Collection, curated by three students from Zayed University and guided by curators Dr. Nada Shabout and Magali Arriola. Featuring works from 1949 to 2024, the show explores how art connects people across time and place, reflecting Dubai Collection’s commitment to education, research and cultural preservation.

Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem has been commissioned by Julius Baer to produce a major new digital work for 2025, marking Julius Baer’s 10-year partnership with Art Dubai. Directions (Merging) transforms global GPS coordinates of waves into an animated, infinite loop, reflecting Dubai’s position at the crossroads of diverse cultures and ideas. The piece speaks to the potential of technology to shape our understanding of the world while echoing the ever-evolving nature of the city itself.

HUNA Living have commissioned a new installation Early One Morning 2025, a permanent public artwork by Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren at H Residence. The playful pink structure invites interaction and sparks curiosity—part sculpture, part social space. At the fair, Dahlgren also shows I, The World, Things, Life, an interactive installation consisting of a wall of dart boards, turning the ordinary into something extraordinary.

Piaget debuts a new commission by Kuwaiti artist Alymamah Rashed, whose surrealist work Your Love Moves Around My Trapeze Sun draws on the Maison’s bold 1960s and 70s heritage. Presented as part of the Play of Shapes exhibition, the piece captures Piaget’s signature sense of movement, emotion and craftsmanship through Rashed’s unique visual language.

For the first time in the Middle East, Andy Warhol’s BMW M1 Art Car comes to Art Dubai. Painted in just 23 minutes, the car is a rare fusion of art and speed—part of BMW’s legendary Art Car Collection. Warhol joins a roster of major names including Roy Lichtenstein and Jenny Holzer in this groundbreaking series, now celebrating 50 years.

Julien Charrière brings his Conversations with Nature series to the Ruinart Lounge. Created with pigments from crushed coral and limestone, his delicate lithographs reimagine underwater worlds. Both poetic and unsettling, the works reflect on the fragility of ocean ecosystems in the face of environmental change.

Art Dubai Talks and Conferences

Art Dubai remains dedicated to convening the art world’s brightest minds and to facilitating pressing conversations. The Global Art Forum, Art Dubai’s transdisciplinary summit, returns for Art Dubai 2025, The New New Normal, and will explore how societal transformations, from quantum computing to artificial intelligence (AI), are reshaping our world. The Digital Summit returns for its second edition, addressing the pressing themes of technology’s impact on the global art landscape.

In addition to these flagship events, the Collector Talks and Modern Talks series will provide intimate platforms for collectors and scholars to share their perspectives, while Conversations with Artists offers unique access to the creative minds featured in this year’s gallery programme, and the HUNA talks series presents live conversations with leading cultural figures from the UAE.

The daily programme of talks can be found here. 

18-20 April 2025, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai.