Held from February 28-March 3, 2024, Art Dubai's 17^th edition showcased more than 100 galleries, with over two-thirds representing the Global South. Despite a challenging geopolitical landscape, the fair enhanced its regional presence in West Asia and broadened its influence across continents, extending from East Asia through Africa to Latin America.

The Global South and the Art Market

The concept of the 'Global South' has gained prominence in the curatorial approach of major biennials and triennials in non-Western countries, especially in Asia from Sharjah to Jogja Biennale in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, through Kochi and Kathmandu, contributing scholarly insights in art and socio-cultural history to the politico-economic origins of the term. Museum and gallery exhibitions have followed suit and now the semantic extension of the Global South to art aligns with Art Dubai's aim to platform non-Western art within decolonial narratives and challenge the Western-centric paradigm in the art world. Leveraging its strategic geographic location as at the nexus of five continents and its highly cosmopolitan society, with up to 88.5 per cent of its population being non-Emirati, Art Dubai has positioned itself as the centre of gravity in the Global South's art market. The fair distinguishes itself from competitors such as Art Basel and Frieze, by emphasising truly global exchanges and decentralisation from major art trade hubs like New York, London and Paris.

An Integration through Concentric Circles

Art Dubai has progressively brought together galleries and collectors from its core to peripheral regions since its inception in 2007, reflecting the cultural and artistic diversity of West Asia and the Global South. At the scale of Dubai, this integration crystallises through various initiatives such as the Dubai Collection, which was allocated space for the exhibition Encounters لقاءات at the fair, curated by Alia Zaal Lootah, formerly Assistant Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Art Dubai Digital cultivated an innovative image of Dubai, with a full third of the 24 exhibitors of this section hailing from the Emirate. Reflecting its private-public profile, Art Dubai has also cultivated institutional partnerships, including through Alserkal Avenue, the primary art district in Dubai, the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation and the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Not to mention the upcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, whose collection’s scope is rooted in the WANASA region, complementing its museums in New York, Venice and Bilbao while limiting overlaps with the modern and contemporary galleries of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Meanwhile, we can also observe the rise of artists from the Gulf at the fair, bolstered by both regional galleries such as Saudi Arabia’s ATHR (AlUla, Jeddah, Riyadh) and Hafez (Jeddah, Riyadh) and European ones like Krinzinger (Vienna) and Sabrina Amrani (Madrid). The latter presented a wide selection of Manal AlDowayan's works, in parallel with her two-site exhibition in AlUla, ahead of her representation of Saudi Arabia's participation at the Venice Biennale. These crossovers are accompanied by the development of private institutions such as the Jameel Arts Centre, founded by Saudi philanthropist and art patron Fady Jameel in 2018 in Dubai and complemented by the Hayy Jameel, an affiliated art centre opened in 2021 in Jeddah.

Art Dubai also benefited from intensifying the cultural agenda in the Gulf countries. From mid-February to early March, the region became the stage for an unprecedented number of events and openings. In addition to the annual Culture Summit Abu Dhabi and Sharjah Art Foundation’s March Meeting in the UAE, significant events in Saudi Arabia included the opening of the third edition of Desert X AlUla, the second Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale and the inaugural AlUla Future Culture Summit, complemented by the first Design Doha Biennial in Qatar and the International Museum Construction Congress (IMCC) at the Oman Museum Across Ages in Manah, Oman. These events attracted more art patrons, curators and museum directors to attend the fair, as evidenced by the presence of representatives from Asian institutions such as the Qatar Museums Authority, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Singapore Art Museum and the SongEun Art Space alongside counterparts from Western institutions, including the Pompidou Centre, the Tate, Queen’s Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. This alignment facilitated the development of Art Dubai’s programme of panel discussions, such as its Collector Talks, notably featuring Nadia Samdami, President of the Samdani Art Foundation and co-founder of the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh and Hiba Nesr, co-founder of the Nesr Art Foundation in Luanda, Angola. The inaugural Art Business Conference in the Middle East in partnership with Art Dubai also attest to the emergence of Dubai as a key art market hub and stakeholder.

A strong dynamic can also be observed through the representation of galleries from South Asia, with 14 Indian and one Sri Lankan gallery, the highest number of participants from the region ever. This strengthened presence reflects a deep demographic interest in the UAE. AlSerkal serves as a perfect window, with the Ishara Art Foundation dedicated to presenting contemporary art of South Asia and Nalini Malani’s exhibition at Concrete (a multi-disciplinary space designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture) co-organised by Volte Art Projects, a gallery founded by Indian entrepreneur Tushar Jiwarajka. This convergence has been empowered by the steady growth of the art market in India, as evidenced by the performance of the last India Art Fair (IAF) in early February 2024, preceded by the promising start of Art Mumbai last year, a new fair that will return in mid-November 2024.

Synergies have also been created with Africa, encompassing both the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan regions. Moroccan artists, in particular, were celebrated in 2024, as evidenced by the Comptoir des Mines Galerie (CMG, Marrakech) booth’s sell-out shortly after the VIP preview. Among its artists, Fatiha Zemmouri has garnered strong attention from a wide range of collectors, buoyed by her inclusion in the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection and her notable participation in the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2023. West African artists are also making strides in the market, exemplified by El Anatsui, the Ghanaian sculptor currently exhibited at the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale and represented by Efie Gallery (Dubai) at the fair.

Art Dubai has now extended its reach further East into Southeast Asia with Singaporean exhibitors Yeo Workshop and Gajah Gallery (Singapore, Jakarta, Yogyakarta) and further West into Latin America with Colombia’s Galeria Espacio Continua (Bogota), Guatemala’s Galeria Extra (Guatemala City), Uruguay’s Invernizzi Art Lab (Montevideo) and indirectly with Italy’s Galeria Continua, which has branches in both Cuba (Havana) and Brazil (Sao Paulo). Regarding these South American connections, it’s worth recalling Pablo del Val’s extensive experience in Mexico as director of two other fairs, Expoarte Guadalajara and Zona Maco, before joining Art Dubai in 2015 as the Artistic Director. In 2024, he invited Emiliano Valdés, Chief Curator at the Medellin Museum of Modern Art (MAMM) in Colombia, to curate both Art Dubai's Bawwaba section and Commission Programme.

Ultimately, Art Dubai has consolidated its regional base despite a difficult geopolitical context, while further integrating countries from the Global South to secure room for growth. This strategic integration will find an additional artistic window in 2025 with the opening of the Sharjah Biennial 16.

STIR was a Media Partner with Art Dubai 2024, taking place at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, from March 1-3. Click here to read STIR's exclusive coverage of the 17^th edition.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its Editors.)