Art Dubai Contemporary showcases galleries from around the world, ranging from emerging art scenes to established centers, and offers new global perspectives to help cultivate a culture of discovery.

Applications are reviewed by the Art Dubai Selection Committee Andrée Sfeir-Semler, Founder, Sfeir-Semler Gallery (Beirut/Hamburg) and Priyanka Raja, Co-Founder, Experimenter, (Kolkata/Mumbai), as well as our 2025 section curators; Mirjam Varadinis, Dr. Nada Shabout, Magalí Arriola, and Gonzalo Herrero Delicado.

Apply for Art Dubai 2025 by clicking below.

Bawwaba, meaning ‘gateway’ in Arabic, will this year by curated by Mirjam Varadinis, a writer and Kunsthaus Zürich Curator-at-large with an extensive curatorial career, with many of her projects addressing evolving formats of contemporary curating.

This section will present 10 solo presentations featuring artworks created within the past year or conceived for the fair. For its sixth edition, Mirjam asks the question ‘How can we imagine new forms of coexistence, both amongst people and with our planet?’. With this, the section will show artists who reflect on their own displacement in our current climate, and imagine new models of living together.

Bawwaba serves as a portal to the discovery of works created in the past year or specifically for the fair itself, offering visitors a curated reading of current artistic developments across wide geographical scopes.

Apply for Bawwaba 2025 by clicking below.

Art Dubai Modern will be curated by Magalí Arriola art critic, and Director at Museo Tamayo, Mexico, whose independent pursuits have seen her work on international projects, such as the Mexican Pavilion for the 58th Biennial, and Nada Shabout, Art History Professor at the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, U.S, whose research and teaching works to confront, address, and respond to the art historical neglect of modern and contemporary art from the Arab world.

Art Dubai Modern focuses on modern masters from South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), featuring presentations by artists who have been influential throughout the 20th century, and whose works play a key role in forming an understanding of the current cultural landscape.

For the first time, Art Dubai Modern will include Latin America in this section, as it addresses migration around the mid nineteenth century that influenced a growing relationship between Latin America and SWANA.

Apply for Art Dubai Modern 2025 by clicking below.