Dubai Collection is an international collection with no geographical restrictions, with artworks selected by a qualified curatorial committee. It is the first institutional art collection in the emirate, held under the patronage of H. H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al MaktoumVice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE. This art event permits to enrich the story of Dubai and narrate its cultural identity.
The Collection lives thanks to partnerships with patrons who support the initiative through an innovative format where they lend artworks, but they always retain legal ownership. A.R.M. Holding is the first corporate patron of the Dubai Collection, which selected 19 from the 22 artworks. The exposed artwork gather themes as memory, time, and storytelling, featuring works by established and emerging artists from the Middle East, such as the Kuwaiti Hamra Abbas or the Saudi photographer Moath Alofi, who exposes an ongoing series entitled The Last Tashahhud.
International artists are also invited, such as the Peruvian sculptor Ishmael Randall and the Japanese Katsumi Hayakawa, known for his cityscapes and urban districts made of white paper, giving us an immersive view from an architect or an urbanist. The Collection holds a distinct appreciation for the qualities of materials that are inherent to construction and architecture.
Its geographical breadth functions as a map of global urbanism, offering perspectives from artists working in studios, among many others. The goal is to lever the universal art language to stimulate innovation: that echoes A.R.M. Holding's belief in the importance of cultural expression and community. Constructing identities is the Collection's central theme. We can think about art's role in the self-concept and architecture acts in defining and building communities. While each artwork is unique, thematic threads of memory, materiality, and urbanism weave together to present a coherent community and human expression.
