Art Dubai's lessons will live on long after the fair ends

Children's workshops and talks on NFTs are only two of the UAE annual event's educational elements

Art Dubai has returned to Madinat Jumeirah this year, with its most extensive list of participating galleries to date. The fair opens to the public on March 11 and runs until March 13. All photos: Antonie Robertson / The National

Photographer Dia Mrad at the Zawyeh Gallery booth where his works are on view.

The Postmasters booth at Art Dubai's inaugural digital art section.

Aicon Gallery's booth features a solo presentation of works by Indian modernist KS Kulkarni.

Volte Art Projects’ booth includes works by Nalini Malani, Wim Delvoye, Anish Kapoor, Sujata Bajaj, Studio Drift and more.

Green Art Gallery's booth at Art Dubai includes works by Maryam Hosseini.

Tonia Nneji’s paintings at Rele Gallery.

Murat Palta's miniature paintings at the X-ist Istanbul booth at Art Dubai.

Canvas Gallery is showcasing vivid works by miniaturist Wardha Shabbir.

Commissioned work by James Clar at the Julius Baer lounge at Art Dubai.

Agial Art Gallery is presenting works made from 1930-1975 by the late Lebanese artist Bibi Zogbe

This year's Art Dubai includes more than 100 contemporary, modern and digital galleries from 40 countries.

Works by Mit Jai Inn at the Silverlens booth.

Art Dubai is presenting its inaugural digital art section, with 17 galleries specialising in the medium, as well as NFTs.

Works by Radhika Khimji at the Experimenter Kolkata booth.

Art Dubai features commissioned presentations that can be found throughout Madinat Jumeirah.

More than half of the galleries are made up of names from the Global South, as the fair furthers its aim of becoming the go-to for art outside of the typical western circuit.

Among the highlights of this year's fair is the modern section curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, who opted for muted gray walls instead of the usual bright white.

Art Dubai Digital will be the fair's first digital art section.

Three galleries from Tehran will bring together artists that have shown with them in the past.

A visitor during a preview of Art Dubai 2022.

Empty plastic bottles, cans, corks and scrap paper are being refashioned into art objects at ARM Holding Children’s Programme, which has been held throughout Art Dubai, taking place this year at Madinat Jumeirah until Sunday.

Scroll through the gallery above to see photos of Art Dubai 2022.

On the final day of the fair, artist Cyrus Kabiru is leading the last of 12 workshops where he guides children through how to repurpose everyday materials to create models of glasses, robots, cars and any other items they can imagine.

“I want to show them how to give trash a second chance,” Kabiru says. “The idea is to show them that when they see a bottle, it’s not just a bottle. They can see something differently, creatively.”

Kabiru, who lives and works in Nairobi, is known for creating sculptural works from scrap materials. Among them are eclectic, attention-grabbing eyewear that he calls C-Stunners, as well as radios and bicycles, all recast from spare parts.

“I never knew I’d become an artist,” he says. “I try to encourage children and show them what they can do with these materials.”

He travelled to Dubai after being selected by the organisers to lead this year’s children’s programme. Back in Kenya, Kabiru visits schools once a week to give 30-minute demonstrations and workshops with children on how to produce his steampunk-style creations.

“I started mentoring three kids and now I am dealing with a whole school,” he says.

At the workshop, brother and sister Daniel, 11, and Nicola, 8, are making their own versions of C-Stunners. For his pair, Daniel has replaced lenses with the bottoms of plastic bottles, fastened with tape and colourful string. He says that while he paints in art class during school, he hasn’t worked with upcycled materials before.

Meanwhile, Maureen P, an Australian mother who has been living in the UAE for nine years, watches on as her daughter, aged 10, makes her own creations.

It is the second time that her children have participated in the programme and she says last year’s workshops were “amazing”.

“It’s great for children to make these things before they question the value of it. They can just experiment. It’s also good for them to have a creative outlet,” she says.

In the coming months, from April to June, kits prepared by Kabiru with the Art Dubai team will be distributed across 80 schools in the UAE, reaching approximately 5,000 students who can replicate the Kenyan artist’s style. The kits contain instructions from the artist and a video guide, as well as a list of what materials can be used for upcycling projects.

While there have been children’s workshops at the fair in previous years, it was only in 2021 that the ARM Holding Children’s Programme was extended to schools.

Last year, the programme worked with 50 schools and 2,000 students across the country.

“The reason why we started the children’s programme is because there currently isn’t a structured arts educational programme in the UAE,” says Benedetta Ghione, executive director at Art Dubai.

“It’s something we feel passionate about because you can’t be what you can’t see. Evolving culture comes from a young age. We want to make people aware of artistic production and the possibilities of it.

“My ambition for the programme is to reintegrate it into a government-led system. That means that we can keep bringing the content, but ensure that it is everywhere and done in a systematic, structured way. The five-year structure for the programme is that it becomes part of the KHDA [Knowledge and Human Development Authority] curriculum."

Art fairs are not usually known as educational sites. Often, the focus of fair organisers and the galleries involved in the event is to make deals and earn enough sales to make up for the costs of participating.

Ghione, however, believes Art Dubai should also keep the UAE’s arts ecosystem growing. “For the last 15 years we have filled gaps of different kinds,” she says, speaking of the private/public partnership between Art Dubai and Dubai Culture.

“We bring the content. It makes sense for us to be the instigators of these initiatives as experts and with our relationships with galleries and artists."

Learning about digital art and NFTs

Art Dubai has facilitated other educational opportunities, too. It also has the long-standing Campus Art Dubai programme, which this year has been split into two strands, the first being a series of months-long traineeships where participants can work across fields of communication, production and sponsorship related to the fair.

The second is the Campus Art Dubai exhibition, a result of an eight-week development and mentorship programme with 12 UAE and international artists seeking to venture into digital art and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

Ghione says Art Dubai’s talks programmes, including Global Art Forum, Art Dubai Modern Talks and the introduction of Bybit Talks, are helping art experts and enthusiasts understand new trends in the art world.

“Once a year Dubai has this cultural moment and we are at the heart of it, so we try to bring conversations to the table that some people won’t have otherwise,” she says.

Particularly packed this year were the Bybit Talks, where people from the crypto community have gathered to give introductory discussions on digital art and cryptocurrency.

Gallerists have also played a role in increasing awareness around these subjects.

At Morrow Collective’s booth, for example, co-founder Anna Seaman notes a number of visitors are coming to the fair to gain clarity on the value of NFTs.

“At least half of the conversations I’ve been having in this booth are about helping people understand the crypto art space,” she says. “When we started a year ago, the question was, ‘what is an NFT?’ Now it’s about ‘what do I with it?, ‘how to buy it?’, ‘how do I display it?’ Of course we are a commercial business and we want to make those sales, but we’re also finding it necessary to educate people as well.”

Even Art Dubai’s young volunteers are taking the fair as an opportunity to gain some knowledge in art. Rifah Shahed, 19, a student studying fashion branding, says she’s learning about art, specifically digital art, for the first time.

“I’m learning from the works I’m seeing. I’m getting inspired by ideas and patterns. It’s nice to work with artists and what they’ve created and hear their stories,” she says.

“I do my own digital art for my courses, but I didn’t really know that you could also sell art as these digital assets. The art world has evolved into a digital world and I’ve never really seen this before."

Elsewhere, Dubai visitor Serdar Yanikov, an interior designer, says the fair has introduced him to regional talent. “For me it was amazing to see the domestic galleries from Dubai and the Middle East and compare them to European galleries. It’s a really high level of work that is coming from the region. It’s more than just decorative works, but conceptual ones, too.”