Spreading its Wings…..Art Dubai 2013

Text: Salwat Ali

Photographs: courtesy Art Dubai

 Dubai, commonly considered a booming tourist destination and a glitzy shopper’s paradise is primarily an international trading hub where spectacular bouts of financial speculation, bold building projects and gold / diamond commerce are just some of the principal activities defining its intensely commercial culture. Formerly indifferent to the finer arts it was devoid of indicative infrastructure like art academic institutions, galleries and museums.  The city’s rising prominence as a center of art and cultural discourse is a very recent phenomenon that owes its occurrence in a large measure to the traffic and debate generated by its flagship annual art event simply titled Art Dubai. For other Muslim countries, in close proximity to UAE, whose art history traverses millennia but has yet to gain significant recognition, the evolution and success of Art Dubai is not just a case – study for developmental research but also a viable gateway into the international art arena where the established western sensibility and the rising eastern ethos have a productive interaction.

 Instituted only seven years ago Art Dubai has managed to establish its credentials as an art festival where marketing strategies are being balanced with a visionary outlook.   What started as an event solidly grounded on market principles – bringing wealthy patrons with bare walls together with decoratively pleasing artworks – it is turning into something more substantial. Critics from the west were initially skeptical about the fair’s status but approval is beginning to mount as every successive edition of Art Dubai expands its art dialogue in relevant directions. The cultural, economic and political context of Art Dubai and its symposium the Global Art Forum, as well as its commercial, educational and curatorial role and the related flourish of galleries in Dubai address the complex connections that exist in the MENASA (Middle East North Africa South Asia) region between art as a critical practice, art as a marker of modernity and a commodity of hyper-capitalist consumption.