Art Dubai Triumphantly Returns

Art Dubai 2025 (Photo by Cedric Ribeiro _ Spark Media for Art Dubai)

Art Dubai, the Middle East’s leading international art fair, today opened its 2025 edition last week. . Art Dubai 2025 ran from 18 – 20 with previews on 16 and 17 April at Madinat Jumeirah. This year’s programme features over 120 gallery presentations drawn from 65 cities and five continents, alongside an ambitious programme of commissions and installations, talks and conferences and special events. The leading commercial platform for art and artists from lesser- represented geographies since its foundation in 2007, Art Dubai has a unique model that is a catalyst and engine for the growth of Dubai’s cultural scene and creative economy.

At the press conference opening Art Dubai’s 2025 edition Pablo del Val, Art Dubai’s Artistic Director, commented: “Art Dubai’s programme continues to go from strength to strength. This year’s line-up reflects the rapid maturing of the cultural scene in the Gulf region. Dubai is a unique, global city, one which is home to communities and peoples from all over the world, with different languages and traditions and, as we approach our twentieth year, the fair has become the main platform and commercial marketplace for galleries and artists from these scenes and geographies. We are proud to champion these voices, supporting a more diverse and global art world.”

Art Dubai is held under the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. The fair is held in partnership with A.R.M. Holding. It is sponsored by Swiss Wealth Manager Julius Baer. Art Dubai’s exclusive Watch and Jewellery partner is Piaget. Culturally driven lifestyle developer HUNA is a partner of Art Dubai. The Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) is the strategic partner of Art Dubai and Art Dubai Digital. Madinat Jumeirah is the home of Art Dubai.

Art Dubai 2025 Gallery Programme

Exhibitors in Art Dubai’s Contemporary, Bawwaba, Modern and Digital sections number over 120 and have representation in more than 65 cities. The 2025 edition welcomes 30 first-time participants and the geographic breadth of the exhibitor line-up reflects Art Dubai’s role as a gateway for discovery, learning and exchange, as well as its ongoing commitment to showcasing art and artists from less-represented geographies.

The 2025 edition of the fair saw continued strong representation from artists and art centres across the Middle East, the African continent, and West and South Asia. The continued expansion and development of Dubai’s cultural scene, and the city’s status as the Gulf region’s financial and commercial hub is also reflected in the number of Dubai-based exhibitors (over 20) and the growing number of Emirati, UAE and GCC-based artists showed their artwork at the fair.

Art Dubai is committed to placing untold regional art histories in dialogue with global art movements, and each year invites international academics and art historians to curate specific sections of the fair. Each year Art Dubai invites esteemed international and regional curators to oversee specific sections of the fair.

Bawwaba exclusively featured gallery presentations of artworks made in the past year or specifically for Art Dubai, which presented artists who hail from across the Global South. Bawwaba 2025 is curated by the writer and curator-at-large at Kunsthaus Zürich, Mirjam Varadinis. Across her extensive curatorial career, many of Varadinis’s projects have addressed evolving formats of contemporary curating, asking the question ‘How can we imagine new forms of coexistence, both amongst people and with our planet?’. The section showed artists who reflected on their own displacement in our current climate, and imagined new models of living together.

Art Dubai Modern featured presentations by the region’s Modern masters, reinforcing Art Dubai’s commitment to art historical research and under-explored art histories. The 2025 edition is curated by Magalí Arriola and Nada Shabout and featured nine presentations exploring common concerns and empathies between West Asia and North Africa. Highlights included important presentations by New Vision Group; Bertina Lopes and Mehdi Moutashar. This year, for the first time, Art Dubai Modern expanded its remit to include Latin America, with the inclusion of Venezuelan artist Darío Pérez Flores.

Art Dubai Digital is a unique curated section of Art Dubai that is dedicated to the pioneering artists, collectives, galleries and platforms who are shaping today’s digital art world. This year is the fourth edition and is curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado. It is entitled “After the Technological Sublime” and features presentations that examine how artists and creative practitioners are working with advanced technologies – including artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality – to interrogate the key environmental, social and political challenges of our time. Reflecting Dubai’s ongoing commitment to innovation and new technologies, Art Dubai Digital is complemented by an annual Digital Summit - presented in strategic partnership with Dubai Culture - that convenes international and local industry leaders to discuss and debate the expanding digital art ecosystem and Dubai’s unique place within it.

Commissions and Installations

Since its foundation in 2007, Art Dubai has played an important institutional role in the growth of the local and regional cultural scenes, shaping and delivering high-impact cultural programming through long-term, year-round partnerships with institutions, business and government.

Art Dubai’s 2025 programme underscored the fair’s commitment to providing significant commissioning opportunities for local and international artists; convening the world’s brightest creative minds through innovative talks and conference programming; and supporting scholarship and professional development programmes to develop the region’s future cultural leaders.

Highlights of this year’s programme included a new series of performances and sculptural installations with Mexico-based artist Hector Zamora, who inaugurated a new co-commissioning partnership between Art Dubai and Alserkal Avenue; a major new digital commission by Mohammed Kazem, presented by Julius Baer; and experiential installations by leading international artists including Breakfast, Ouchhh Studio and Ania Soliman all were displayed at Art Dubai this year.

Talks and Conferences

Art Dubai’s extensive talks and conference programme took place across 5 days of the fair. Highlights include the two-day Global Art Forum, commissioned by Shumon Basar and curated by Y7 under the title The New New Normal. Across two days and where many of the world’s foremost thinkers, technologists, artists, and forecasters were featured, the programme examines how change keeps changing, often making everyday life feel more unsettling and unpredictable than science fiction. Further highlights included a series of Collector, Artist, and Art Dubai Modern Talks, as well as the second edition of Art Dubai’s Digital Summit.

About Art Dubai

Founded in 2007, Art Dubai is the most significant global art gathering in the Middle East. A catalyst for the rapid growth of the region’s art scene and creative economy, Art Dubai provides an important gateway for discovery, learning and exchange, championing galleries and artists from less-represented geographies. Each year Art Dubai spotlights around 120 contemporary, modern and digital galleries from over 40 countries. The gallery programme is accompanied by artist commissions, an ambitious education programme and the most extensive talks programming of any international art fair.

Art Dubai reflects the robust growth and spirit of its home city – a cosmopolitan hub of innovation and the Gulf region’s financial and commercial hub. With over 40 commercial galleries, global auction houses, and a rapidly expanding private and corporate collector base, it is also the centre of the region’s art market.

Art Dubai works in partnership with government and business to develop and deliver ambitious long-term initiatives to support the long-term growth of the UAE’s cultural sector. These include Dubai Collection - the first institutional art collection for the city of Dubai; Dubai Public Art, a multi-year and city-wide public realm commissioning programme; the most extensive cultural education programmes in UAE schools, developed in partnership with A.R.M. Holding, and Campus Art Dubai, which supports the next generation of cultural leaders through professional development, training and mentoring.

About Art Dubai Group

Art Dubai Group is a public-private partnership with Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) founded in 2007, and has grown to become the most experienced cultural programming company in the Gulf. Comprising more than 30 initiatives, including the region’s leading art and design fairs and festivals, it is a provider of industry expertise to the business and government sectors, alongside year-round commissioning and professional development programmes.

The group’s flagship initiatives include Art Dubai; Downtown Design – the region’s leading design fair with a focus on high quality and original design; Dubai Design Week – the region’s largest design festival; Prototypes for Humanity, the world’s largest and most diverse assembly of academics addressing social and environmental challenges; and Editions – the Middle East’s first limited edition art and design fair.

For more information about Art Dubai, please visit their site here. Art Dubai can also be found on Facebook, X, YouTube, and Instagram.

Art Dubai Triumphantly Returns

Hauser & Wirth at Art Basel Hong Kong 2025