The organisers of Art Dubai have been outlining their plans for next year’s event. The 2020 edition, due as usual in the Spring, was one of the first of the international art fairs to be cancelled as the pandemic spread earlier this year; now we hear its fourteenth edition will take place 17-20 March next year – in person, with a layout “adapted to the current times” and all necessary safety measures.
The interesting part of the announcement was that the fair will expand beyond its usual Madinat Jumeirah base – where the fair galleries will still be sited – to include sites across Dubai, Sharjah, and, for the first time, Abu Dhabi.
Also announced was the appointment of Hala Khayat as regional director; previously, Khayat was head of sales at Christie’s Dubai.
Impact
Established in 2007, Art Dubai has become the predominant art fair of the Middle East. An economic analysis suggests the 2019 event pumped AED 121.4 million into the local economy – 79 percent of which was down to attendee spend. That was made up from AED 25.3m on accommodation, AED 18.2m for food and drink, AED 5.7m on transportation … and AED 25.9m on shopping “away from the event” plus AED 20.4 million on “other expenses”.
According to the report, a total of 16,902 members of the public attended Art Dubai 2019, 41 percent of whom were non-residents for whom Art Dubai was the primary reason for visiting the Emirate. These people spent AED 15,715 per person on average.
So from an economic point of view there are many good reasons for ensuring that Art Dubai continues, and that it continues to prosper.
Equally there’s no question that it all functions well from the art viewpoint, providing a focus and showcase for mid-career local artists, fostering the gallery ecosystem, encouraging art and artists from the Middle East and Asia (one of its explicit remits), and delivering genuinely valuable thinking-about-art like the Global Art Forum and the Modern Symposium.
Of course, Art Dubai also provides an important counterpoint to the less attractive international tropes (mass tourism and money laundering, vulgarity and Z list glamour, short-termism and the need to be bigger, higher, faster and the most jewel-encrusted).
So from just about every angle it makes sense for Art Dubai to spread across the Emirate, to allow more people to see and participate. There will be an expanded Invited Curators Programme in partnership with the Jameel Arts Centre and the Sharjah Art Foundation – more details to follow.
The interesting move is south to Abu Dhabi. We’re promised “a new exhibition platform tracing common threads across local artistic practices” that will be a collaboration with Abu Dhabi’s Warehouse421.
We’re told that this doesn’t affect the position of Abu Dhabi Art, by a long way the junior of the UAE’s two art fairs. But this is the first time that Art Dubai has ventured into the capital; and there won’t be a physical Abu Dhabi Art this year, which means Art Dubai has a good opportunity to emphasise its prominence.
Engagement
More good news for Art Dubai is the recent appointment of Hala Khayat as regional director. She had been at Christie’s Middle East for more than a dozen years, latterly as head of sales and specialising in Arab, Iranian and Turkish art. She’s lectured on Arab art history and the market, developed courses for Christie’s Education in Dubai and Doha, and has been a long term fan of Art Dubai – she has been to the fair every year since it began in 2007, which coincidentally is when she joined Christie’s Dubai office.
“I have seen first-hand its role as a catalyst for the regional art scene,” Khayat (right) said. “In my role as regional director I’ll be engaging with the audience and bringing them to discover the wealth of content the fair is offering every year and throughout the year.”
The job description is a little vague – she “will work with the team to develop strategies for local and regional collectors’ engagement … Khayat’s extensive expertise in the Middle East and UAE will drive the growth and development of sustainable long-term engagement”. In practical terms, this presumably means talking to buyers and helping them identify artists that would add lustre to their collections and/or future gains for their investment.
Interestingly, Khayat is also an advocate for Syria’s art community; this is something of a hotspot in regional art, having been starved of international attention while the war distracts the world. Khayat has researched and documented some key Syrian collections, she’s done a catalogue raisonné on the noted Syrian artist Louay Kayyali (1934-1977), and she is cofounder of an NGO called SAFIR (Syrian Artists for International Reach) that supports young artists from the country – around 17 of them at present. Khayat hosted a SAFIR presentation at Art Dubai 2018, and it’s worth checking out the enthusiasm and apparent commitment that she brings to the project.
Disengagement
The only blip on an otherwise rosy overview of the UAE in the international art scene is an open letter organised by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) “along with partners in the Arab world and internationally”. Signed by more than 80 Arab artists and art organisations, this pledges a boycott of “any event sponsored by the UAE regime or by any company or institution that is complicit in the implementation of the normalisation agreement” until the UAE “ends its normalisation with Israel and ends its grave violations of human rights”.
The letter hasn’t received as much attention internationally as its organisers might have hoped, but then the whole question of Israel seems just too intractable at times. Palestine is an ethical issue, and these days it seems ethics are easily trumped by other considerations – the Jewish vote in the USA, the need to gang up on Iran, the distaste for the tactics of Palestinian militias branded as terrorist organisations, Israel’s pre-eminence in developing sophisticated tools for keeping a discreet eye on civil populations.
But the signatories, who express their support for “the Palestinian struggle for liberation, self-determination and the return of refugees”, don’t seem like a ravening bunch of hotheads. Mostly Palestinian by birth, they include some big names from the art world – among them Samia Halaby, Khaled Jarrar and Rachid Koraichi.
Even before adding his own name to the letter, the Berlin-based Palestinian photographer Mohamed Badarne had taken steps to withdraw his work from Sharjah Art Foundation’s Vantage Point Sharjah 8, where he was due to show a photographic series titled Everyday Palestine (2015–2018). Badarne had been one of 30 or so photographers selected by open call for what is one of the best (and best-known) photo exhibitions in the region; as he put it to Hyperallergic, “the exhibition was a valuable opportunity to show my work, especially after the COVID-19 slumber” but “I didn’t hesitate for a moment …The Sharjah Art Foundation is an extension of the Emirati government. I could not have a relationship with a regime that is now officially complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestinians”.
SAF gave Hyperallergic a decently phrased response: “We regret that Mohamed Badarne’s voice will not be represented in Vantage Point Sharjah 8, but respect his decision and hope to work with him in the future. We will continue to work with and provide platforms for Palestinian artists and organizations through our exhibitions and programs …”
It remains to be seen how sticky the boycott is and whether it spreads. Palestinian galleries have been included in Art Dubai with considerable success, notably Zawyeh and Gallery One from Ramallah, and several artists from Palestine have been introduced to a wider audience. It seems likely that this relatively small but relatively important source of new art might be shut off from Dubai.
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