Art Dubai today announced the list of participating galleries at its 2022 edition, which will be its most extensive to date. The fair will take place at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai from 11-13 March 2022, with previews on 9 and 10 March.
The leading global platform for art and artists from the Middle East and Global South, the 15th edition of Art Dubai will present over 100 galleries from more than 40 countries across four main gallery sections: Contemporary, Modern, Bawwaba and new section Art Dubai Digital. The 2022 fair will include more than 30 first-time participants and over 50% of the gallery programme is drawn from the Global South, reaffirming Art Dubai’s position as the leading marketplace for art from this region.
The fair’s upcoming edition marks the debut of Art Dubai Digital, an innovative new digital art and NFT section that will provide a comprehensive, 360º introduction to this fast-developing landscape. This new physical section of the fair will showcase a curated selection of digital artworks presented by 17 leading international galleries and platforms, examining the context out of which NFTs, cryptocurrency, video art and virtual reality (VR) have grown since the rise of digital art in the 1980s. The programme will be accompanied by an extensive talks and education programme, including the 15th edition of Global Art Forum and a series of introductory talks.
Art Dubai 2022 Gallery Programme:
Art Dubai Contemporary 2022 will feature 77 galleries from 33 countries, and will welcome 15 first-time exhibitors in 2022. New participants will include Andréhn-Schiptjenko (Stockholm/Paris), FORO.SPACE (Bogota), Isla Flotante (Buenos Aires), MARUANI MERCIER (Brussels/Knokke/Zaventem), P420 (Bologna), Rhizome (Algiers) and Window Project (Moscow/Tbilisi).
Art Dubai Modern 2022 is curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath and will feature solo presentations of museum-quality works by 20th century masters from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. Featured artists in 2022 will include Bibi Zogbé (Agial Art Gallery, Beirut); Mohamed Kacemi (Comptoir des Mines, Marrakesh); Aref El Rayess (Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg) and Rabin Mondal (DAG World, New Delhi/Mumbai/New York).
Bawwaba – meaning gateway in Arabic and exclusively featuring works made in the past year or specifically for the fair – will feature ten solo presentations, including six first-time exhibitors: TARQ (Mumbai), NATURE MORTE (New Delhi), VIGIL GONZALES (Cusco), Jahmek Contemporary Art (Luanda), Madragoa (Lisbon) and Rele Gallery (Lagos).
Following a successful debut in March 2021, Art Dubai is also pleased to confirm the return of its innovative Gallery Support Programme, where accepted galleries only pay booth fees based upon sales. For the 2022 fair, the scheme is open to galleries formed in the last five years and either based in, or representing artists from, the Global South.
Art Dubai Digital
As the art world continues to adapt and evolve in the digital and NFT realms, new communities are emerging to support these worlds, involving new creators and stakeholders.
Art Dubai Digital will include a dedicated gallery section curated by Chris Fussner, Web3 specialist and Director of Tropical Futures Institute (Cebu, Philippines), that will include leading international platforms working with NFTs; contemporary galleries with projects devoted to digital art and NFTs; galleries that have been working with digital art since the 1980s; and NFT e-commerce sites and organisations that are turning existing physical art into NFTs. The participants, representing a broad geographic base and featuring both traditional galleries and digital platforms, will include Institut, Postmasters, Bright Moments, HORIZONS by so-far and AORA, Cyber Baat, Emergeast and NFT Asia.
The 15th edition of Art Dubai’s celebrated Global Art Forum, entitled ‘This is the Picture,’ will examine the worlds of digital artefacts and crypto economies. Commissioned by Shumon Basar, Global Art Forum 2022 will invite artists, curators, creators, thinkers and technologists to consider a range of topics from NFT art and curatorial projects, pay-to-play gaming, metaversing myths, Web 3.0 hopes, and where legacy institutions might fit in to all the above.
Al Mahha Art Magazine 