Discover Art Dubai 2025: The Premier Contemporary Art Fair in the Middle East

This past weekend, from April 16 through 20, Art Dubai returned for its 18th edition, bringing more than 120 galleries to the United Arab Emirates for an exciting week dedicated to modern and contemporary art from the ‘Global South’ — the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Art Dubai has been the Middle East’s leading international art fair since its founding in 2007, and it has been a major force in developing the region’s cultural landscape.

The Dubai fair is typically divided into four themed sections: Contemporary, Bawwaba, Modern and Digital. These sections offer a curated look at the trends and innovations within each category. Below, we take a look at what stood out in each section in 2025!

Art Dubai Contemporary: Cross-Cultural Dialogue in the Global South

As the ‘main’ section of the fair, Art Dubai Contemporary featured presentations by leading galleries from around the world. Local galleries from the Middle East and the Gulf had a strong presence, but there were also numerous participants from countries like India, Iran, Morocco, China and Singapore. Compared to other major fairs, like Art Basel or Frieze, Art Dubai’s diverse lineup offers a unique slice of the contemporary art market.

Artists at Art Dubai also seemed unafraid of experimentation, as the fair was bursting with mixed media works and large-scale sculptural installations. These risks appeared to pay off — galleries reported strong sales across the five days of the fair, all the way through Sunday.

Bawwaba: Coexistence and Sustainable Art Practices

Bawwaba means ‘gateway’ in Arabic, and this was where to find emerging artists at Art Dubai 2025! Each year, the Bawwaba section is dedicated to artworks created in the past year or specifically for the fair, and this time, there were just 10 solo projects representing 10 countries: Argentina, Georgia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The 10 selected artists responded to the question, “How can we imagine new forms of coexistence, both amongst people and with our planet?” For instance, Saudi artist Abdullah Al Othman collected neon signs from abandoned or demolished buildings in Dubai, using these readily available materials to create an immersive art installation. Another artist, Jorge Rosano Gamboa, explored issues around access to water by collaborating with traditional Mexican artisans to produce artworks that literally weave together cultural heritage with a modern aesthetic.

Art Dubai Modern: Fresh Approaches to Modernism

The Modern section of the Dubai art fair looked beyond the Western canon and turned the spotlight on 20th-century artists who shaped modernism outside of Europe and the US. There was a notable Indian artist featured in this section — Maqbool Fida “M.F.” Husain (1915 – 2011), just a month after his painting Untitled (Gram Yatra) sold for $13.8 million at Christie’s and set a new auction record for Indian art.

Much like Husain, many artists featured in this section drew on their cultural influences and traditions to approach modernism in a fresh way. For example, Mozambican-Italian artist Bertina Lopes (1924 – 2012) took inspiration from African masks in her abstracted paintings, and Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi (b. 1930) incorporated Islamic calligraphy in his work. Another booth in the Modern section focused on The New Vision Group, which was active in Iraq in the 1960s and 70s during a period of artistic development in the wake of independence from the British.

Art Dubai Digital: AI in Contemporary Art & Other New Technologies

Art Dubai was actually the first major art fair to dedicate a section to digital art, and the 2025 edition continued to explore artificial intelligence in art as well as digital installations and blockchain technologies like NFTs.

The standout project from this section was undoubtedly MotherEarth, an AI data sculpture by Istanbul-based Ouchhh Studio. This installation is connected to twin sculptures in Beijing and Mexico City, and in real time, all three sculptures interpret data from NASA satellites into visual animations and react to each other’s interpretations. The result is a mesmerizing visualization of a global dialogue around climate data.

Art Dubai is not only a highlight of the Middle Eastern art scene but a highly innovative fair with a unique selection of emerging and established artists. It is a fantastic fair to discover new artists, especially those living and working in the Global South, and it should absolutely be on collectors’ radars!

— Sonia Patwardhan