Abu Dhabi Art Fair Director on strengthening the fair’s direction for a bigger purpose
Taking place from November 20-24, 2024 at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi Art Fair will feature 102 local, regional and international galleries, making this year the biggest edition to date.
Year after year, the fair has gone from strength to strength to take a far more active role to expand the vision and embed itself further in the art world and nurturing the regional art landscape under the directorship of Dyala Nusseibeh, Abu Dhabi Art Fair Director. From its primary purpose as a commercial platform for participating galleries, Abu Dhabi Art offers visitors a chance to explore installations and site-specific works of emerging and renowned artists. For its 16th edition, the fair introduces new sections featuring modern regional artists and showcasing works from Central Asia and the Caucasus, to foster cross-cultural exchange along with a diverse line-up of programs to engage visitors such as talks and events.
In the lead up to the much-awaited annual art showcase, Dyala shares the highlights for this year’s showcase, how she’s shaping the fair’s direction and strengthening its position within the art world plus, how her early career journey has influenced her curatorial lens.
Tell us about your career journey.
After graduating from Cambridge in 2001 with a degree in Social Anthropology, I went to Italy for a year and became an intern in a small but wonderful place called the Adriano Olivetti Foundation in Rome. The foundation conducts and supports research initiatives in the fields of culture, social sciences, business and urban planning. It works with local and international government and private sector entities to do so. In all honesty, the allure of living in Rome at the time probably superseded the urgency of carving a career path at the age of 21, but it sowed the seeds for a consideration of how to marry public and private sectors successfully in the field of culture.
Those halcyon days in Rome were followed by a stint at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi (the epicentre of the art world in Abu Dhabi back then), two years in PR in Dubai (Saks Fifth Avenue and Aston Martin being among my favourite clients at Rawaj International) and then a Masters in Contemporary Art that took me back to the UK. From there, the Saatchi Gallery in London became my training ground, offering a deep dive into the UK art market and I then went on to found and direct an art fair in Istanbul called ArtInternational Istanbul, under the auspices of the wonderful Angus Montgomery Arts who guided me through the whole process (one of the world’s leading art fair organisers). I joined Abu Dhabi Art as director in 2016 and have now newly returned to Cambridge to begin a part time PhD in contemporary Arab art.
How would you describe what it is that you do?
I think anyone, in any job, is ultimately selling something. Seen through this lens you could say I sell the art fair – to galleries, sponsors, stakeholders and collectors. But a salesman is happiest when they love the product they are selling, as it makes the time they spend doing so, feel well spent. I am incredibly lucky to be passionate about my ‘product’, if you will – which supports the local art ecosystem, enables artists from the region to develop their careers, is a vehicle for research about artists from our part of the world and connects me with cultural professionals from all over.
Under your directorship, how has the fair evolved since its inception and how do you aim to steer the fair’s future direction?
The fair has expanded since I joined in 2016, from 37 galleries participating at the time to more than 100 galleries participating this year. The growth in gallery numbers can be attributed to several factors, not least the growth in the number of collectors, the opening of museums on Saadiyat Island with their attendant collections and the announcement of future museums opening soon. However, one of the ways in which I have helped drive the increase in gallery numbers, is by introducing gallery focus sectors (curated sectors for gallery participants) which has enabled us to work with many new galleries on different concepts for the fair.
I have also launched numerous initiatives for the programming of Abu Dhabi Art which you could consider passion projects – including Beyond Emerging Artists, for which three emerging artists from the UAE are commissioned to create new works with the support of a guest curator each year. Their works are exhibited both at Abu Dhabi Art and internationally afterwards. There are so many incredible young artists in the UAE and this programme has enabled me to work closely with a growing number of them.
Another initiative I launched is artist commissions in cultural sites, which invites three artists to create site-specific works in cultural sites across the emirate. I have also worked with several guest curators for Gateway each year (an exhibition programme that existed when I joined but that I expanded through the participation of different curators, each contributing with new research and transforming the fair into a site for knowledge production).
In terms of Education programmes, I would point to the annual Student Pavilion Prize and the Art + Tech programme across universities amongst other new initiatives, which expand our offering for students. In terms of where I hope the fair will go, as long as it continues serving the local art eco-system and being a site for knowledge production, I am happy.
What sets it apart from the rest of the art fairs globally? How do you strategize the fair’s offerings in order to create a regional identity?
Most fairs globally are organised by commercial entities that need to turn a significant profit from the event each year. Abu Dhabi Art is organised by the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi. This gives us a wider mandate – we need to be efficient and responsible with funds spent, but our goal is to support and drive the local and regional art market, more than to turn a profit ourselves. As a result, we can invest in programmes, book publications or exhibitions that are non-commercial but instead drive an investment in our eco-system.
To you, what role does Abu Dhabi Art play in the wider cultural landscape?
The fair is a platform for local and regional arts professionals, a springboard from which to extend their networks globally and engage global audiences. It is also a gathering of the community, to exchange ideas and research, to view what artists have been working on, to discuss new ideas. As with any major event in a city, finding a moment to bring professional peers together is as much about creating a critical mass from which new possibilities spin out, as it is about taking time to apprehend or assess what has been happening up to that point, in our case in the cultural landscape specifically.
Left: Dyala Nusseibeh, Fair Director at Abu Dhabi Art; Right: Agustín Cárdenas (1927-2001), Untitled, Almine Rech (Images: Supplied)
How do you think your early experiences of art have shaped your vision as a Fair Director?
My earliest experiences of art (other than growing up in a home surrounded by art) would be our summer family Grand Tours of Europe when the UAE heated up July – meaning road trips across Spain, France and Italy visiting all the great museums and spending hours wandering through them as an impressionable child. Part of the enjoyment I take from working on Abu Dhabi Art is that I can learn on the job from the guest curators who contribute each year to the fair and who have included Maya Allison, Hamad Nasar, Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Morad Montazami, Simon Njami, Jerome Sans, Nicolas Bourriaud amongst others – a constellation of great curators who have taught me different ideas through their contributions.
What are some of the biggest shifts in the art space throughout the past five years – have any of those changed the way you approach when working on the fair?
I think we are seeing far more recognition for artists from the region, both modern artists and contemporary ones, in relation to the contexts from which they were working. As a fair we support independent research and take ownership of our own art histories from the region, sharing that information both among our own communities or societies but also in new geographies. Rather than framing these art histories in relation to Euro-American canons, which was a starting point in the past, we consider the importance or significance of modern artists and movements from the region as something distinct – however networked with global counterparts in Europe or America. Our Gateway exhibition this year goes one step further, and moving away from Centre-Periphery frameworks. This new approach for research will be long-lasting.
Alia Farid Installation, BLIND DATE 2.0, 2024, Sfeir-Semler Karantina, Beirut, Lebanon (Image: Supplied)
How do you discover creatives and galleries you’d like to work with?
A lot through visiting fairs, biennales, artist studios, also through reading around the subject.
What are you looking forward to this year – any highlight that you’re personally excited to see?
So many! Our Beyond Emerging Artists this year, Dina Nazmi Khorchid, Fatma Al Ali and Simrin Mehra Agarwal are phenomenal, and they have worked closely with guest curator Galleria Continua on their soon to be revealed exhibition works. Our commissioned artists in Al Ain cultural sites, Manal Mahamid, Ahmed Al Areef and Dina Mattar are collaborating on an exhibition centered around the idea of the indigenous gazelle. Our co-curators for Gateway, Odessa Warren and Carine Harmand are curating the exhibition Otra Orilla (Another Shore) which explores the connections between the Arab world and South America as mentioned earlier. Participating artists for this exhibition including Emilia Estrada, Alia Farid, Francisca Khamis Giacoman, and Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez, as well as a new commission by Mandy El-Sayegh.
On the gallery side, I look forward to our new focus sectors that include Something Bold, Something New, a spotlight on modern artists from the region; The Collectors Salon bringing together galleries presenting artifacts, historical objects, manuscripts and artworks in a first time ever for Abu Dhabi Art, and Silk Road: Drifting Identities bringing together galleries and artists from Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Ali Cha’aban, Metamorphosis, Leila Heller Gallery
How do you deal with push backs when launching a new initiative?
Pivot and keep going or dig my heels in – depends how far I think persistence will get me! A friend recently forwarded me an article on stoicism, made simple by author Ryan Holiday who explains “The faster you can get to acceptance, the faster you can get to a solution or the learning of a lesson.” I try to accept any major roadblocks and work around them or rejig them, if a new initiative isn’t quite getting through.
How do you remain open-minded and interested in seeing the next thing?
If it is an area you are genuinely interested in, it doesn’t take much effort. But I suppose you could say its cumulative rather than detractive – a bit like learning to read. After the excitement of seeing new words take shape and forma sentence, you then progress to chapters or stories and that keeps you going.
To book tickets, visit abudhabiart.ae
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