UAE artists take Korea by storm with ‘Proximities’: “Emirati art resonates globally”

In a landmark cultural moment, the UAE’s contemporary art scene is making an unprecedented impact in South Korea.
Proximities, presented by the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF) in collaboration with the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), is the largest exhibition of contemporary visual art from the UAE ever staged in Korea.

On view until March 29, the show brings together over 110 works by 47 UAE-based artists, including 33 Emiratis, spanning photography, video, sculpture, performance and installation. Co-curated by Maya El Khalil and Eunju Kim, the exhibition explores how “proximity” – emotional, geographic and cultural – shapes artistic meaning across generations and geographies.

At its core, Proximities reveals a UAE art scene that is experimental and globally resonant – a narrative embodied in the works of Emirati artists Shaikha Al Ketbi and Mohamad Kazem.

For Abu Dhabi-based Shaikha Al Ketbi, Seoul marks the first time several of her works have been placed in dialogue. Her video installations Sigh (2019) and al Ukhra (2019) unfold like poetic fables.

A mysterious character appears to have fallen from outer space into a desert bathtub, then moves through an abandoned playground, performing subtle rituals in response to her surroundings. The works probe tensions of balance, fragility and adaptation in landscapes oscillating between the familiar and the surreal.

“These works can be viewed as a two-part video installation,” Al Ketbi said.

Her more recent piece, Book (2024), filmed at Japan’s Site of Reversible Destiny, introduces another character wearing an upside-down mask – a replica of her own face. Set in an architectural environment designed to disorient the senses, the work becomes a meditation on perception and multiplicity.

“The reception has been thoughtful and curious,” she said.
“Exhibiting in Seoul reinforces how Emirati art is increasingly understood through its own specific vocabularies rather than only through orientalist framing or questions of representation. The audience seems attentive to details of texture, gesture and spatial transformation, which makes the dialogue feel both generous and rigorous.”

For Al Ketbi, heritage is a living set of gestures and mythologies that can be reactivated. “The balance comes from allowing tradition to behave unpredictably, and allowing experimentation to remain grounded in memory, humour and the everyday,” she said.

If Al Ketbi moves through dreamscapes, Mohamad Kazem’s practice is rooted in observation of lived realities. The Dubai resident presents Window (2002–2003) and Directions (Merging) (2022). Though separated by two decades and distinct media, both explore how human presence is inscribed in the environment and how those inscriptions are revealed or erased.

Window combines video, documentary photography and text to examine what lies behind architectural development: labour, hierarchy and social invisibility. In contrast, Directions (Merging) observes engraved coordinates gradually erased by the sea – a reflection on impermanence and human intervention.

“The response has been attentive and thoughtful,” Kazem said.

Viewers engaged with themes of labour, erasure and environmental change “without the need for cultural explanation.”

“Emirati art can resonate internationally when it speaks to lived conditions and shared human experiences rather than relying on identity-based narratives.”

Kazem focuses on the social structures and transformations of his environment. “Experimentation is a way of responding to reality,” he said.
For both Al Ketbi and Kazem, exhibiting in Seoul highlights a growing confidence in the UAE’s artistic voice – one that speaks not only of place, but of shared human conditions.