At the official presentation of the 20th anniversary edition of Art Dubai, I met with Dunja Gottweis, the fair’s newly appointed Director, to discuss this pivotal chapter for the region’s leading art platform.
Returning to Madinat Jumeirah from 17–19 April 2026 (previews on 15 and 16 April), the anniversary edition unfolds under the framework “Future, Past, Present,” bringing together more than 100 contemporary, modern, and digital presentations from over 35 countries.
A revamped structure introduces new curatorial sections—including Zamaniyyat and Bawwaba Extended—alongside Galleries, Bawwaba, and the fifth edition of Art Dubai Digital.
With increased participation from Africa and Latin America, 36 first-time exhibitors, and over half of galleries hailing from MENASA, the 2026 edition reinforces Dubai’s role as a global meeting point for artists, galleries, and collectors—while marking the first fair under Gottweis’ leadership.
Art Dubai 2026 is framed around “Future, Past, Present.” In a global art world increasingly driven by immediacy and acceleration, what does it mean for a fair to insist on simultaneity, on holding multiple temporalities in tension rather than choosing a single narrative of progress?
We all hold multiple temporalities. There is no meaningful understanding of the present without engaging with the past, just as the future is never imagined in isolation. Art Dubai does not seek to be weighed down by history, but it recognises that the past remains the vehicle through which future aspirations are formed — a process of maturation rather than nostalgia.
In many ways, the evolution of Art Dubai mirrors that of Dubai itself. Over the past 20 years, both have grown through proximity, exchange and experimentation. Progress here has never been linear, but layered.
Art Dubai 2026 is not conceived as a retrospective moment. The framework is deliberately forward-facing. Reflection serves only to set the tone for what comes next — positioning this edition as a launch rather than a look back. It also creates space to explore the relationship between modern and contemporary within several gallery presentations.
This simultaneity is reflected in the scale of the fair. With 120 exhibitor presentations from 37 countries, Art Dubai brings together practices operating across geographies, timelines and cultural reference points — echoing Dubai’s identity as a city defined by movement, diversity and exchange.
A clear expression of this thinking is Zamaniyyat, which approaches Modernism not as a unified movement but as something unfolding across uneven global histories. By resisting a shared timeline, the section opens alternative readings of modernity rooted in place and lived experience.
Art Dubai operates simultaneously as marketplace, site of encounter, platform for discovery and driver of year-round cultural infrastructure. Rather than collapsing these roles into a single narrative of progress, the fair holds them in productive tension.
This is your first edition as Fair Director, and it coincides with Art Dubai’s 20th anniversary, a moment of both reflection and reinvention. How did you approach stewarding an institution with a strong legacy while still allowing space for rupture, risk and structural change?
What struck me immediately was the sense of momentum around the fair — and how assured it feels. There is room to experiment, rethink structures and invite new voices, but this happens within an ecosystem carefully built over two decades. Art Dubai has become a constant in the city’s cultural life, and that continuity creates the conditions for change.
Working within an institution already comfortable with evolution allows you to think less in terms of disruption and more in terms of recalibration. One of Art Dubai’s defining strengths is that its history has always been one of curiosity and responsiveness.
This year we are seeing a more than doubled presence from Africa, alongside continued momentum from Latin America. Structurally, this has translated into creating space for ideas to unfold differently. We are introducing Bawwaba Extended, allowing larger and more experimental projects to develop across the site, and presenting the fifth edition of Art Dubai Digital, which continues to test how immersive practices function within a fair context.
Taking the fair’s legacy seriously means understanding that it was never meant to be fixed. Its most consistent trait has always been its capacity to change.
Zamaniyyat revisits modernisms through uneven and non-linear histories, while Bawwaba foregrounds long-term relationships in a moment of global market contraction. Taken together, these sections seem to propose an ethics of care rather than spectacle. Is Art Dubai consciously positioning itself against the dominant “event economy” of art fairs?
Zamaniyyat and Bawwaba introduce a different emphasis within the fair. They foreground research, historical depth and long-term relationships at a moment when much of the global art world is driven by speed and visibility. At the same time, Art Dubai does not withdraw from the energy of the global art calendar. It can be both a moment of intensity and of reflection.
Zamaniyyat, curated by Dr. Sarah A. Rifky, brings together 11 galleries and 45 artists from over 20 countries, focusing on practices from the 1950s to the 1990s. It examines how modernisms unfolded across uneven, interconnected histories. For example, the presentation of Gazbia Sirry by Zamalek Art Gallery spans five decades of work, tracing her movement from political figuration to abstraction and offering a lens onto Egypt’s social transformations.
Bawwaba, curated by Amal Khalaf, centres solo presentations of newly produced work by emerging artists. This year it is supported by the Bawwaba Gallery Support Programme, a risk-sharing model that enables greater access for young galleries. What ultimately matters is whether the fair creates conditions for artists and galleries to work with depth, awareness and continuity.
Dubai is often described as a city of the future, yet Art Dubai insists on grounding itself in regional histories and lived contexts. How do you negotiate the tension between Dubai as a global hub and Dubai as a deeply specific cultural site, without flattening either dimension?
Dubai has been formed through waves of migration, trade and exchange for generations. Art Dubai mirrors that trajectory. Over two decades, it has grown alongside the city’s cultural infrastructure — from a handful of galleries to an ecosystem of more than 40 commercial spaces, auction houses, foundations and institutions.
In 2026, 28 exhibitors maintain permanent representation in Dubai, and more than half of participants come from the wider MENASA region. This coexistence of past and future is embedded in the city itself. The fair reflects that specificity while attracting audiences shaped by similar patterns of movement and exchange.
With the introduction of Bawwaba Extended, the fair expands beyond booths into the city and public space. Do you see this as a shift from Art Dubai as a destination to Art Dubai as an experience, or even as a form of urban intervention?
Art Dubai has always understood art as exceeding the confines of a booth. Through Art Dubai Week, Dubai Collection and Dubai Public Art, it operates within a wider cultural landscape.
Bawwaba Extended builds on that foundation. Curated by Amal Khalaf and Alexie Glass-Kantor, the new section focuses on large-scale public works unfolding across the Madinat Jumeirah campus. Inspired by the concept of thresholds, it invites projects that resist conventional formats. The fair site becomes a space of encounter where works interrupt circulation and activate shared space.
Rather than a shift, this represents a deepening. In many ways, it reflects Dubai itself. Culture here moves between institutions, commercial spaces and public sites. Bawwaba Extended aligns the fair with that urban condition, positioning Art Dubai as a framework through which the city is experienced.
Art Dubai Digital 2026 is titled “Myth of the Digital,” rejecting the idea of digital art as either marginal or futuristic. In your view, what myths still dominate how institutions and collectors understand digital practice, and what is at stake in dismantling them now?
The dominant assumption remains that digital art lives on screens, when in many practices the digital functions as the underlying structure of the work. Art Dubai Digital 2026, curated by Ulrich Schrauth and Nadine Khalil, foregrounds installation-led and multisensory works that translate sound, scent, data and code into spatial experience.
Now in its largest edition to date, with 23 new gallery participants, Art Dubai Digital brings together global and regional voices. Artists such as Franco Verrascina appear alongside established figures like Marina Abramović, collapsing distinctions between simulation and materiality.
Its role lies in holding space for urgent questions: how we encounter ourselves through mirrored digital interfaces, and how digital art manifests — whether on a screen or in tactile, spatial form.
More than half of the 2026 participants come from MENASA, yet the fair’s reach is increasingly global. How do you ensure that regional representation does not become a branding device, but remains a site of genuine intellectual and curatorial agency?
As an independent platform, Art Dubai can prioritise rigorous curatorial inquiry. For two decades it has foregrounded narratives historically peripheral to dominant market centres.
The fair reflects Dubai’s layered, interconnected demographic fabric while supporting artists whose practices speak to displacement, continuity and technological authorship — from Mohammed Al Hawajri’s work emerging from Gaza, to Morehshin Allahyari’s AI-driven re-readings of Persian histories.
Continuity is key. The aim is not visibility for a single edition, but sustained engagement within the region’s cultural life.
Looking ahead to Art Dubai’s third decade, what can — and perhaps must — an art fair do today that museums, biennales or commercial galleries cannot? Where does Art Dubai see its most irreplaceable role?
An art fair sits at the intersection of market, discourse and encounter. Museums historicise, biennales frame critical narratives, galleries build sustained artist relationships. An art fair moves between these worlds with agility.
What it can — and perhaps must — do today is create meaningful friction. It convenes artists, collectors and curators who might not otherwise meet, allowing ideas to circulate rapidly within a city that operates as a global crossroads.
As Art Dubai enters its third decade, its role is to support artists and galleries while shaping the conditions under which art is made, seen and sustained.
Art Dubai often feels less like a moment in the calendar and more like a permanent cultural presence in the city, embedded through education, public art and long-term programmes. How do you articulate Art Dubai as a year-round cultural ecosystem rather than an event that peaks for three days each spring?
Art Dubai has become part of the city’s cultural muscle memory. Artists, galleries and collectors build trajectories through it, and students encounter contemporary art through its education programmes long before entering the fair.
The energy does not begin and end in April. Fair week is a point of convergence — the visible expression of conversations, commissions and partnerships unfolding throughout the year. Through initiatives such as the Art Salon and Dubai Collection, developed with Dubai Culture, Art Dubai remains embedded in the city’s evolving creative economy.
It is this sustained work that gives the fair week its charge.
