Art Dubai, the leading international art fair in the Middle East and South Asia, which concluded last week with marvelous exhibits and huge sales, attracted a large number of art lovers to Dubai. The show took place at Madinat Jumeirah comprising amazing galleries from 34 countries and over 500 artists.
“Art Dubai’s development over the past eight years reflects the extraordinary growth of UAE‘s art scene,” says Antonia Carver, fair director, Art Dubai.
“Dubai has become a hub of museum directors, curators, and art world professionals from all over the world,” Carver added.
The event had three distinct programs: Contemporary, the inaugural Modern, and Marker.
The Contemporary section housed more than 70 galleries exhibiting new works for sale. Galleries from different countries, including the Jeddah-based Athr and Ayyam galleries participated in the show. The halls were active with installations, paintings and sculptures infiltrating every corner.
“I think I am lucky that I could visit the galleries, and this year I found artists from different corners of the world,” said Lena Francois, an art lover from Paris, who was visiting the show at Madinat Jumeirah.
This year Art Dubai launched a new gallery program, Modern, devoted to Middle Eastern and South Asian modern art from the twentieth century. In this section, each booth presented a solo or two-person show by highly influential artists, including Rasheed Araeen (Grosvenor Gallery, London), Michel Basbous (Agial Art Gallery, Beirut), Hamed Abdalla and Adam Henein (Karim Francis, Cairo), M.F. Husain (Aicon Gallery, New York/London), Ardeshir Mohasses (Shirin Gallery, Tehran), and Anwar Jalal Shemza (Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai), among others.
The Marker section focused on artists from Central Asia and the Caucasus, highlighting the organizers’ wish to broaden the fair’s geographical reach, in line with Dubai’s expansion as a commercial hub.
Contemporary Saudi artist Ahmed Mater’s works are a hit at the Athr Gallery. The Jeddah-based gallery brought a number of well-known artists and their works. Sara Abdu, Ibrahim Abumsmar, Dana Awartani, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Basmah Felemban, Hazem Harb, Saddek Wasil, Arwa Al-Neami, Ghada Al-Rabea, Nasser Al-Salem and Jowhara Al-Soud were some top names lined up with Athr.
The gallery was pleased with the sale of the metal sculpture by Saddek Wasil. It was sold to a North American collector for a whopping $14,000.
Adnan Manjal of Athr Gallery told Arab News that the response was good and sales were higher than last year. “We found that regional and international customers are returning.”
Ayyam Gallery also exhibited a number of well-known works. Ead Samawi of Ayyam Gallery told Arab News that there were a number of queries on different works. Ayyam Gallery sold several works from Ammar Al-Beik’s Lost Images series as well as works by Samia Halaby and sculptural works by Nadim Karam, for undisclosed prices.
Ayyam gallery presented works by Samia Halaby, Safwan Dahoul, Nadim Karam, Sama Alshaibi and Athier on display. Palestinian artist Samia Halaby’s natural scenery and British-Iraqi artist Athier’s experience of watching warfare in the Middle East attracted art lovers. The stunning mix of organic and non-organic elements in the work imbue the canvas with a kinetic energy, which is then passed on to the viewer.
The Third Line, a Dubai-based firm, which had a solo presentation of Farhad Moshiri‘s works, had a sale of BB for approximately $200,000 to the Suha Islam Family Collection. Paris-based Jaeger Bucher sold Zarina Hashimi’s Tasbih for $60,000 to a Turkish collector along with a work from the Walking Painting series by Fabienne Verdier for $80,000 to a Dubai-based collector.
Italian Artist Elisabetta Di Maggio had on display an Amazon Water Lily’s Victoria leaves that she had dried, cut and shaped. The Amazon Water Lily attracted several Arab and Western visitors to the Laura Bulian Gallery. Using a scalpel, Di Maggio intervenes amid their dorsal veins (their material is almost a vegetable form of flesh), creating slender yet decisive lacerations for air. It is a sort of an alliance of mutual resistance, giving shape to fragility as a source of transformation rather than weakness.
“There is an inquiry for this piece, but I am not selling it right now, as we expect an amount more than 10,000 Euro for this," Di Maggio told Arab News on the last day of the event.
Lara Favaretto, to pick at another random yet fascinating artist, had a playful touch to her work. There is a 400 kg pink-colored cube on display, which was made of confetti, compressed pink confetti.
The event also featured an exhibition of new works by winners of the annual Abraaj Group Art Prize. The 2014 winners of the Abraaj Group Art Prize are Abbas Akhavan, Anup Mathew Thomas, Basim Magdy, Bouchra Khalili and Kamrooz Aram.
Abbas Akhavan’s Study for a Hanging Garden is a floor-based sculptural work that looks toward the flora native to Iraq to dwell on the effects of time on power. Kamrooz Aram’s Ancient Through Modern: A Collection of Uncertain Objects, Part 1 is a wall installation that investigates the arbitrary value of cultural artifacts. Anup Mathew Thomas’ photographic series Nurses seeks out healers who have traveled away from Kerala toward new horizons.
Titled Meanwhile…History, the eighth edition of the Global Art Forum also took place on the sidelines of the event. The forum featured over 40 speakers and contributors.
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