With its incredible location, with no shortage of beautiful beaches, fabulous urban delights, and amazing restaurants, Dubai has something for everyone. The city has always been a major center of activity in the Middle East, because of its port location and proximity to other nations, but in recent years Dubai has been going through a kind of cultural renaissance. Musicians and visual artists and performers are finding the city to be welcome and supportive of new art works and performances. The multicultural nature of the place means there are splendid restaurants of all types of food, with some of the finest chefs in the world, and there is also a whole lot of art.
Art Dubai is one of the more visible events as far as galleries go, with state support helping to promote the efforts to bring dozens and dozens of art houses together to display some of the most innovative art in the region. They also have a fantastic online journal to go with these efforts, called, simply enough, Art Dubai Journal. This monthly helps to fill in the gaps when Art Dubai is not happening, and is a wonderful window into the local art scene.
There are three sections for each issue of Art Dubai: Debate, a forum where critics chime in to discuss pressing issues around the local and global art scene, focusing on topics specific to each issue; Interview, where an established or emerging artist discussed their work process with the editors; and The Project Space, where a new work is presented in a virtual space. It’s a heady combination, where theory and criticism and art practice have a meeting ground in a public space. There is also something very appealing to the idea of the Project Space, because it always puts the focus back to the artists producing work. The focus is local, and the sensibility is global, and the appeal of Art Dubai is broad, inviting global culture to take part in the conversation.
