Art Dubai: The Preeminent Oasis for Art
Sandra Strele, Rooftop Tennis Court, 2025, acrylic, water-based paint and pigments on canvas, 70 x 100 x 2 cm, Courtesy of The Rooster Gallery.
Living up to its essence as a crossroads of cultures, creativity and art, Dubai hosted its 19th Art Dubai since its foundation back in 2007.
Abuzz with the vibrant energy of visitors, artists, and creatives of all walks of life, Art Dubai celebrates the contemporary, the classical, the modern and the digital art worlds, as showcased through dozens of diverse galleries from around the world.
While many art fairs and initiatives have now joined this colorful field (including Art Week Riyadh that debuted in 2025), Art Dubai is a pioneer that filled a crucial gap in the art market when it was launched, giving critical exposure to art from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Today, Art Dubai is more than just an art fair—it’s a colorful creative oasis and a catalyst for cross-cultural dialogue, knowledge and artistic exchange. With each edition, it continues to push boundaries, championing underrepresented voices and unique creations, and dazzling audiences with its kaleidoscopic energy.
In an interview with Ithraeyt, the Executive Director of Art Dubai Benedetta Ghione shares some insights into this edition of Art Dubai.
Benedetta Ghione, the Executive Director of Art Dubai.
Art Dubai is always evolving. We welcomed 120 galleries from over 40 countries across our four distinct gallery sections - Contemporary, Digital, Modern and Bawwaba. We continue to stay true to our commitment of championing galleries and artists from less-represented geographies and, for the first time, Art Dubai Modern will expand its remit to include an artist from Latin America.
Art Dubai also hosts the most extensive talk programs of any international fair, collaborating with leading critics, scholars and visionaries who drive conversations around art and history from the region and beyond. We encourage critical discourse and educate audiences through initiatives like the Global Art Forum, modern and collecting talks in partnership with Dubai Collection, and The Digital Summit, which returned in 2025 for its second edition.
At the heart of Art Dubai’s not-for-profit program is Art Dubai Commissions, where we invite artists to produce site-specific works as a means to support artistic production by local and international artists. This initiative further enhances the cultural landscape of Dubai. We work closely with global partners to create these new opportunities for artists, and long-term partner Julius Baer commissioned Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem to create a new digital work that focuses on the convergence of communities within the city of Dubai, titled Directions (Merging) -“(اتجاهات (تمازج”
Sandra Strele, Nostalgia VIII, mixed media on canvas, 270x400, 2019.
Courtesy of The Rooster Gallery.
Every year the fair has something new to offer and we pride ourselves on being a place of discoveries, and a gateway for learning and exchange for those experienced in the field as well as those discovering art for the first time. Thanks to our skilled and globally renowned curators, we have artwork from 40 different counties representing differing geographies, societies and challenges that are shaping our world today, side by side during the exhibition.
We welcomed Saudi artists, including Manal AlDowayan and also Sabrina Amrani, one of Saudi Arabia’s most significant contemporary artists and featured in the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia. She explored metamorphosis, examining gender-biased customs and the cultural transformation reshaping Saudi Arabia. Her work, which spans mediums, navigates a territory where the personal and political overlap.
Abdullah Al Othman, represented by Iris Projects, is one of the region’s most significant artists, focusing on the city’s changing landscape using local materials to reflect these shifts, with a research-based approach centred around symbols. For Art Dubai 2025, he created a new version of the work shown at the Lyon Biennial, deeply rooted in his study of Riyadh, while continuing to explore forgotten places and profound human concepts through diverse artistic mediums.
Daniah Alsaleh’s work reflects on memory and cultural conditioning and how messages and beliefs are absorbed and delivered via media and other networks and was part of this year’s digital gallery section. Through different materials and computation, Daniah uses analogies to establish ways of reading and unearth unexpected perspectives.
There will always be the human side to art. Even with digital art, it needs a creative mind to envisage the piece and create it and a human understanding of how it represents what is happening in society today. It’s important to examine how artists and creative practitioners are integrating advanced technologies such as AI, virtual reality and augmented reality into their work to interrogate the environmental, social and political challenges of our time.
And as the world evolves, so does its art, and we look forward to witnessing the creative energy of those in the creative cultural industries who reflect, challenge and sometimes push this domain into new frontiers.
Discover more artists and enjoy the artworks via Art Dubai’s diverse Catalogue.
