This week, the global art crowd descends upon Madinat Jumeirah for Art Dubai 2025 (Instagram), the Middle Eastโs most dynamicโand deliciously unpredictableโart fair. With over 500 artists and 120 galleries from 65 cities, this yearโs edition promises to be an intoxicating blend of boundary-pushing contemporary work, regionally grounded retrospectives, and experimental digital fantasies. Think: a little less white cube, a little more new world order.
This isn’t just an art fairโitโs a cultural multiverse. Four meticulously curated sectionsโContemporary, Modern, Digital, and Bawwabaโoffer everything from West Asian modernist legends to digital dreamscapes crafted by algorithm and augmented reality. Artistic Director Pablo del Val has once again gathered an ambitious cast of galleries and curators to make Art Dubai a crucial node in the global art network, and this yearโs fair feels less like a regional satellite and more like a gravitational force in its own right.
In Bawwaba, curated by Kunsthalle Zรผrichโs Mirjam Varadinis, the focus is on works made within the past year that grapple with ideas of migration, displacement, and radical togetherness. Ten solo presentations from ten countries underscore the sectionโs mission: to look forward by rooting deep. Meanwhile, Art Dubai Modern expands its horizons to include Latin America for the first time, in a nuanced conversation between geographies of shared complexity and resilience. Curated by Dr. Nada Shabout and Magalรญ Arriola, the section is an elegant rebuttal to Western-centric art histories.
And then thereโs Art Dubai Digitalโa world unto itself, curated by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, where the future is sculpted with code. Expect an AI dream kaleidoscope by Dubai-based Hybrid Xperience, a kinetic data-reactive sculpture by BREAKFAST, and a glacially inspired tech-epic by Jacopo Di Cera. Itโs the only section of its kind at a major international fairโand it knows it.
Off the gallery grid, a flurry of commissions, performances and installations keep the pulse of the fair racing. Alymamah Rashedโs poetic, celestial commission for Piaget fuses gold leaf and deep blues to reimagine time itself. Andy Warholโs iconic BMW M1 Art Car makes its Dubai debut, celebrating 50 years of the brandโs pioneering art-meets-speed programme. And Mohammed Kazemโs Julius Baer commission, โDirections (Merging),โ uses GPS to map the poetics of Dubaiโs place on the global cultural map.
The programming is just as ambitious as the artwork. The Global Art Forum, Digital Summit, and daily conversations with curators and collectors put Art Dubai at the centre of crucial discourse. Notable speakers include Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rem Koolhaas and Lawrence Abu Hamdan. And if all that leaves your head spinning, the After Dark seriesโwith DJs like Habibi Funk and Melikaโwill keep the mood gloriously grounded in groove.
Art Dubai is where old civilisations meet new media, and where art becomes a portal into tomorrow. As the fair opens its gilded gates once again, one thingโs clear: the future isnโt comingโitโs already here, shimmering beneath the desert sun.
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