Lebanese artist Dala Nasser will take centre stage at the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi this November, unveiling a major new site-responsive commission that draws directly on Lebanon’s landscape, history and material memory.
Born in Tyre and working between Beirut and London, Nasser has been selected by curator and art historian Nabila Abdel Nabi for the first Frieze Abu Dhabi Artist Award. Her new work, Qubbat Duris, will transform the atrium of Manarat Al Saadiyat when the fair opens from 19 to 22 November 2026.
Taking its name from a 13th-century monument near Baalbek in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the installation looks to a structure whose architecture itself carries traces of different eras. Roman limestone sarcophagi sit upon eight granite columns from earlier centuries, creating a monument shaped by the movement and reuse of materials across time.
For Frieze Abu Dhabi, Nasser will reinterpret that history through a timber framework evoking the heritage site, draped with paintings on textile bearing physical traces of the surrounding Lebanese landscape. Charcoal rubbings of the ruins will be combined with ash, raw clay and terracotta, transforming material into a record of place, memory and loss.
The work considers how landscapes carry histories across generations, while also reflecting on collective responsibility towards environments and heritage facing destruction.
Nasser’s commission sets the tone for a first edition that places artistic practices from the region at the heart of a wider international conversation.
“Frieze Abu Dhabi takes shape within a rich and evolving cultural landscape,” says Frieze Abu Dhabi Director Dyala Nusseibeh. “Spanning generations and geographies, it reflects the artistic histories, ideas and practices that connect Abu Dhabi to a wider scene.”
More than 80 galleries from 36 countries and regions will participate in the fair, which is being presented by the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi and Frieze at Manarat Al Saadiyat.
Alongside Nasser’s commission, the programme introduces In Dialogue, a new annual exhibition curated by Dirwaza Curatorial Lab. Its first edition, titled At Another Meeting Point, brings together UAE artists Mohammed Kazem and Alia Zaal, pairing established and emerging practices to explore connections across different generations.
Art will also move beyond the fair itself through Frieze Sculpture Abu Dhabi, which opens at Mamsha Beach on Saadiyat Island from 16 November to 16 December.
The outdoor programme will feature large-scale works by artists including Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Zeinab Alhashemi, Imran Qureshi and Kamran Samimi. Alhashemi’s The Nut and Bolt, for example, transforms a familiar element of urban construction into a conceptual object, while the wider programme examines relationships between material, ecology, landscape and the built environment.
A three-day programme of talks will further expand the conversation, bringing together artists, curators, museum directors, collectors and cultural leaders. Topics will range from the development of global museums to different approaches to curatorial knowledge, with speakers including National Gallery Singapore Director Eugene Tan and art historian Michael Govan.
Yet the symbolic heart of the inaugural edition remains Nasser’s Qubbat Duris.
For an artist whose practice is deeply connected to land, archaeology, displacement and the physical traces carried by materials, bringing a fragment of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley into the centre of Frieze Abu Dhabi creates a particularly resonant opening statement.
Nasser’s work does not simply reproduce a monument. Instead, it asks what survives around it: the marks left in soil, stone, fabric and memory, and what responsibility remains when landscapes themselves become vulnerable.
As Frieze establishes its new chapter in Abu Dhabi, it begins with an artist looking back towards Lebanon and asking how history continues to live through the materials we inherit.
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