Art Dubai unveils extensive programme for 2023

Dubai: Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Art Dubai has announced details of the programme and partnerships for its 16th edition. The expanded 2023 programme features an ambitious and multi-strand conference, talks and education programme, reinforcing Dubai’s emergence as a hub for art and culture and a significant contributor to global conversations about contemporary art.

The 2023 edition of Art Dubai will be held at Madinat Jumeirah from March 3 to 5, 2023, with previews on March 1 and 2, 2023. Art Dubai’s expanded 2023 programme, developed in collaboration with local and international cultural partners, reaffirms the premier art fair’s role as the meeting point for the Global South’s creative industries and communities. Highlights of the 2023 programme include site-specific commissions and premieres by renowned international artists, presented in partnership with the region’s leading institutions.

The expanded programme continues Art Dubai’s long-standing commitment to thought leadership and supporting the development of Dubai’s cultural infrastructure. The Artist Commissions for 2023 are themed around food, community, celebration and hope, with artists selected from participating Lead partner

Julius Baer has renewed its association with Art Dubai as its lead partner for another five years until 2027. The Swiss wealth management group will premiere a newly commissioned artwork by Refik Anadol, the new media artist and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. The commission will debut in Dubai as a part of Julius Baer’s new initiative, NEXT, which will encourage the interdisciplinary exploration of megatrends across the arts, science and technology.

Also debuting at the fair will be UAE First Immersion, a presentation of new artworks produced following the November 2022 visit to the UAE by some leading names in digital art. The exhibit will be part of the expanded second edition of Art Dubai Digital, which will feature collaborations with various organisations pioneering new institutional models, including Lian Foundation and 6529’s Open Metaverse project.

Flagship initiative

Celebrating its 10th edition, Campus Art Dubai, Art Dubai’s flagship professional development initiative, will expand to incorporate placements with local partners, including Alserkal Avenue and Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and 421, an Abu Dhabi-based emerging artists platform. With 421, the fair will present a new group exhibition curated by UAE-based artist and researcher Dania Al Tamimi.

The 16th edition of Art Dubai’s celebrated transdisciplinary conference Global Art Forum, commissioned by Shumon Basar, will explore the theme “Predicting the Present” and consider the central question: if it’s the end of history and the end of the future, what happens next?

The fair’s 2023 conference programme will expand to include the first Dubai edition of Christie’s Art+Tech summit. The summit brings together regional and global leaders, innovators, artists, and visionaries to foster meaningful dialogues on the intersection of Art and Technology. The sixth iteration of the summit—and the first in the region—will survey tech trends, hear from artists incorporating tech in their practices, and explore current and future challenges and opportunities.

Role of collectors

Highlighting the role played by collectors and philanthropists in developing the region’s cultural infrastructure, Art Dubai 2023 will include a series of high-level Collector and Modern Talks, presented in partnership with Dubai Collection, the first institutional art collection in the city and for the city.

Benedetta Ghione, Art Dubai’s Executive Director, said: “Art Dubai has always tried to reframe what an art fair can be. This year’s expanded programme fully reflects our role as a meeting point for the region’s commercial and not-for-profit creative industries. As an innovative public-private partnership, we have been an incubator of talent, a catalyst for the creative economy here in Dubai, a convener of great minds, and an entry point to this vibrant ecosystem for the wider cultural sector. We are thrilled that our long-term partnership with Julius Baer will continue into a second decade. Their continued support allows us to provide the next generation of the region’s artists and arts professionals with incredible opportunities.”

Global art fair

Pablo del Val, Art Dubai’s Artistic Director, said: “As the global art fair landscape shifts, Art Dubai continues to play an important role in profiling and supporting the cultural ecosystems of the Global South. The 2023 programme fully reflects this region’s growing importance, energy and vibrancy. One of our strongest ever gallery line-ups, complemented by an expanded commissioning and thought-leadership programme, highlights the breadth of discourse happening here and offers a glimpse into this important region’s past, present and future.”

Art Dubai is held in partnership with A.R.M. Holding. Julius Baer sponsors the fair. The Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) is the fair’s strategic partner. The leading global platform for art and artists from the Middle East and Global South, Art Dubai 2023 will present over 120 participants from more than 40 countries and six continents across four gallery sections: Contemporary, Modern, Bawwaba and Art Dubai Digital.

Art Dubai 2023: The full programme

At the centre of Art Dubai’s not-for-profit programme is Art Dubai Commissions. This platform invites artists to produce site-specific works at the fair, supporting artistic production by local and international artists. The 2023 Commissions programme will take place in a purpose-built space and comprise daily performances and food-based experiences exploring themes of community, celebration, hope, and connection. Featured artists will include Prajakta Potnis (Project 88), Rathin Barman (Experimenter), Gunjan Kumar (Exhibit 320), Anoli Perera and Tayeba Begum Lipi (Shrine Empire).

The programme is developed in close collaboration with leading institutions that play a pivotal role in supporting artists and artistic production in South Asia. Partners will include Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation in collaboration with Britto Arts Trust, Ishara Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Samdani Art Foundation.

In the second year of collaboration with the fair, 421, Abu Dhabi’s independent platform supporting emerging artists, will present a group exhibition curated by UAE-based artist and researcher Dania Al Tamimi. Featuring artworks that pose the question, does time move through you, or do you move through time?, the exhibition will explore time as the binding element of the biography of objects, the active archive of lives, and the solidifying catalyst of experiences.

Each year, Art Dubai’s celebrated Global Art Forum invites leading artists, curators, technologists and thinkers to take the cultural temperature of our contemporary moment. Commissioned by Shumon Basar, the 2023 edition is entitled “Predicting the Present”. It will consider the central question: if it’s the end of history and the end of the future, what happens next? Stories, experiments and speculations about culture, innovation and society point towards new sources of optimism. Dubai—a future-facing innovation leader—provides the ideal backdrop for these discussions, which will look at navigation tools for our uncertain times.

Speakers will include Lukas Amacher, Head of Art, Dialectic and 1of1 works; Sumayya Vally, Principle of Counterspace, Architect of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion and Curator of the 1st Islamic Biennale in Jeddah; Chiara Costa, Head of Programmes at Fondazione Prada; artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan; and Brendan McGetrick, Creative Director of Dubai’s Museum of the Future.

Art+Tech Summit

This year, Christie’s will host its first regional Art+Tech summit in partnership with Art Dubai. Established in 2018, the sixth iteration of the summit—in conjunction with Christie’s annual summit in New York—aims to bring together regional and global leaders, innovators, artists, and visionaries to foster meaningful dialogues on the intersection of art and technology.

Blending east and west by bringing in both regional and global voices, the one-day conference will survey trends, hear from artists who are incorporating technology in their practices, and explore current challenges and future opportunities to collaborate.

Presented in partnership with Dubai Collection, Art Dubai’s 2023 edition will also feature a series of Collector and Modern Talks. The Collector Talks will focus on the collectors and patrons who drive the development of art scenes across the Global South and support the redistribution of cultural centres worldwide. Sessions will focus on emerging trends in traditional and digital collecting across the region and what it means to be an arts patron in a place that is developing and implementing new institutional models. Panellists will include noted collectors Qinwen Wang, Fiorenzo Manganiello, and Teo Yang.

Accompanying Art Dubai’s Modern section will be a series of Modern Talks that will invite guest speakers to explore topics of 20th Century artists and art forms from the Middle East and North Africa, hold critical discussions on current trends in collecting across the region and the decolonisation of our art-historical canon.

Art Dubai 2023 marks the 10th edition of Campus Art Dubai (CAD), Art Dubai’s flagship initiative to develop the region’s future cultural leaders and a core component of the fair’s extensive year-round education programme. CAD was the first programme of its kind in the region, developed to provide existing and aspiring members of the region’s cultural and creative community with educational and professional opportunities.

The 2023 edition will feature two concurrent strands. CAD 10.0 Professional Development will expand to include placements at Art Dubai and other leading UAE cultural institutions, including Alserkal Avenue and Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and 421 in Abu Dhabi. A second strand, CAD Public Art, aims to build sector knowledge and capacity in the rapidly developing field of public art commissioning.

Artist-led workshops

This year’s A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme will feature artist-led workshops for children aged 5-17. The A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme will first take place at Art Dubai before expanding to around 100 schools and more than 6,000 children across Dubai, in line with A.R.M. Holding’s long-term commitment to arts education and supporting the development of Dubai’s creative economy.

Launched as a new physical fair section in March 2022, Art Dubai Digital provides an annual 360-degree snapshot of the digital art landscape, with the ambition of building bridges between the world of art and technology and exploring how artists are utilising new, immersive technologies to collapse the boundaries of the traditional art world.

Curated by Singapore-based educator and arts writer Clara Che Wei Peh, the expanded 2023 edition of Art Dubai Digital will welcome a selection of participants with innovative new media programmes, a range of digital platforms building virtual art spaces alongside artist collectives, new institutional models and more traditional bricks and mortar galleries. Together, these platforms challenge and push new models for artistic production and support.

New presentations at Art Dubai Digital 2023 will include Lian Foundation, established by a private collector, patron and expert in Blockchain Technology Fiorenzo Manganiello; 6529 with their decentralised Open Metaverse project; and UAE First Immersion, a presentation of new artworks by some of the leading names in crypto art, produced after they visited the UAE for the first time in November 2022, presented in collaboration with MORROW Collective. The presentation will feature new works by artists, including Coldie, Colborn Bell, Monaris, Bryan Brinkman, Kirk Finkel and Raphael Torres. The works will be made available first to collectors at Art Dubai 2023.