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10/03/2022

Your Day at Art Dubai 2022



Art Dubai offers activities and platforms for a variety of visitors, including families and those who are new to the art scene.


For families visiting the fair, A.R.M. Holding is holding free-to-attend drop-in sessions of art-making, led by the artist Cyrus Kabiru. Based in Kenya, Kabiru will lead children in working with recycled materials and giving them new life by creating sculptures and artworks.The workshops are separated by age cohort and enable young people to think differently about the potential material for artwork, helping to promote sustainable living.


Cyrus Kabiru, The Bad Bug, 2020



Blockchains and NFTs are some of the new vocabularies that visitors are getting their heads around, and this year’s Art Dubai gives a dedicated focus to the digital realm – an area that it has always specialised in, via the long-running Global Art Forum. This year, those interested in the digital applications of art can not only visit the daily talks, lectures and performances at Global Art Forum and the Bybit Talks Series but can see the application of these ideas.



Campus Art Dubai, Blockchain Edition Programme: Top Left to Bottom Right: Karine Roche, Passage, Ameni Abida, Nap, Mourad Kouri, Palmyra Revisited



Major public works are installed around the fair, such as an interactive installation by Filippino-American artist James Clar that investigates the phenomenon of cloud-seeding, which helps instigate rain in dry areas such as the UAE – an example of technology modifying nature itself. The work is installed at the Julius Baer lounge.


James Clar, Cloud-seeding



Other commissions as part of Art Dubai Digital include the minting of a number of NFTs in the project Yugen by filmmaker Martha Fiennes. https://www.artdubai.ae/art-dubai-digital-commission-yugen/. The immersive generative video installation can be viewed in the Art Dubai Digital section of the fair. The collective Fernando Garcia-Dory x INLAND will also present a new installation that responds to the port context of Dubai – a more traditional subject for the fair – which will be installed on Fort Island.



Fernando Garcia-Dory, Sand Flow



The gallery halls themselves have a lot to offer: because of its location, Art Dubai pulls in galleries from around the world, making it an unparalleled opportunity to see a global variety of artworks in one place, with 44 countries represented by artists participating. The curated section, Bawwaba, curated by Nancy Adajania, takes this idea of Dubai as the “Gateway” as its focus, looking at an intentionally international swathe of art marking. Art Dubai Modern is more focused on the region, with a specially curated exhibition by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath that looks at how modern art in the Middle East engaged with popular political movements and tendencies.



(Gallery Hall)


Many of the works in the modern might well end up in museum collections one day, as institutions around the world seek to broaden their narratives of how art progressed in the twentieth century. Or you can see this broadening already in action: Art Dubai has also led on the Dubai Collection, which secures long-term loans of major artworks in local collections and puts them in public view. Their first exhibition is now on view at the Etihad Museum – and many of the works were at Madinat Jumeirah just a few years ago.







Nature’s Embrace: Asma Belhamar on Capturing the City and Nature in Motion

Encounters: Curator Alia Zaal Lootah on Emirati artist connections across the ages

Worlds in a Box: Artist Sahil Naik on his plans for the A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme

Prescribing digital art: can creative technologies improve—and extend—our lives?

Ruinart launches ‘Conversations with Nature’ series with artists Marcus Coates and Pascale Marthine Tayou

Art Dubai Digital 2024: Behind the Scenes with Curators Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti