By Amina Al Mazrouei ~
From sand dunes wind-blown to marble in its best-of-the-best museums, the United Arab Emirates has expanded with its breathtaking style beckoning the art of the world. Its rowdiness tower-toppling and its oil wells no longer, the UAE is rapidly becoming an ethnic mix of multi-culture living where yesterday and tomorrow meet in the art expression splattered all around with abandon.
The UAE’s rich cultural scene has been remade into a diverse, rich, multifaceted ecosystem in the past two decades. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are no longer art cities and destinations for collectors, curators, and artists from all over the globe. They’re not only hosting art—but creating it, incorporating it into the country and city’s image.
A Canvas of Cultural Ambition
These venues like Art Dubai are the driving force behind this artistic superiority. The UAE’s premier international art fair, it showcases more than 40 of the world’s most influential international galleries from top-level digital art to ancient UAE relics. It’s a show and a half. “Art Dubai is more than an event,” claims curator Reem Fadda. “It’s a cultural dialogue that places the UAE at the crossroads of civilizations.”
Weighted against the vision stands Saadiyat Island, cultural capital of Abu Dhabi. Blessed by the Louvre Abu Dhabi—a product of an historic collaboration between France and the UAE—the precinct is a declaration of long-standing intention to further intercultural concordance through the arts. One can stroll under Jean Nouvel’s iconic dome gazing over masterworks from far and near continents and centuries with saintly devotion painstakingly chosen to celebrate universal strands in human imagination.
Bottom-Up Innovation
Along with such best-seller sites, a grass-roots revolution is re-defining Emirates’ art production and sharing. Graffiti, pop-up museums, and people’s projects are pulling art out of galleries and calling in the masses. Way out in Sharjah suburbs and way out to Ras Al Khaimah, mural painters, photographers, and multimedia designers are re-writing the place’s history beyond the walls.
It also has one of its cultural hubs in Dubai in the form of Alserkal Avenue. An array of factory warehouses which it consisted of, now a hub of gritty-art galleries, alternative theatres, artist studios, and experience studios. Experimentation and interaction rather than just spectator, now also an opportunity for up-and-coming regional and Emirati artists to kick-start their careers.
The Digital Dimension
UAE artists now are not just mapping material space—good grief, they’re charting virtual ones. Instagram, TikTok, and Artsy armed fresh generations of art to break through geriatric gatekeepers and speak to their publics directly across the globe. Web presence is no longer on the wish list; it’s an umbilical cord, particularly now in the post-COVID era when virtual exhibitions and online sales of artworks are the thing to do.
She has been uncovered here on these pages as a beauty in Farah Al Qasimi and Abdul Qader Al Rais marked their presence abroad outside of the country in the Gulf, shining light shed on Emirati life on the world.
A Legacy in the Making
It is institutional level private patronage facilitated by cultural revival. Ministry of Culture and Youth initiatives and Art have also grown into art education, international co-cooperation, and museums. Sharjah Art Foundation, for instance, has been providing support to Arab world young and emerging artists.
It is evidence of the vision of the UAE: on the global economic stage, but with something to contribute to culture as well.
Last Brushstrokes
What a wonderful coming together of yesterday and tomorrow, East and West, tradition and innovation, which the UAE art scene has done something so supremely lovely. It did not merely draw ideas from others—there has been a decidedly Emirati vision of what a world art capital era would be. From interior halls in buildings to pieces in the corners, from screen-projections of computers on buildings to pages lasting thousands of years, the UAE created a desert gallery and a world-built gallery.
