Travel

Dubai festival’s an opulent art explosion

The cars outside were Rolls-Royce and Ferrari. Inside the champagne was guzzled freely. The art on the wall was being traded for tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars. The fashion for the locals (some of them, anyway) was black abayas for the women, flowing white kandoras for men.

We’re talking of Art Dubai, which kicked off with their opening party last night and will be going until March 22.

Of course, the vast majority of men and women traipsing around the Madinat Jumeirah, the opulent 876-room mega-hotel (actually, it’s two hotels and 29 courtyard summer houses) which is hosting the festival (and one of its main sponsors), were not in traditional regalia; tall, luscious western women were dressed to the nines. Their dates (some older, some soft around the middle) wore suits or blue jeans. French was spoken more often than Arabic — and English was spoken more often than French.

Visitors sit in front of the work of artist Stanislav Kharin.Francois Nel/Getty Images for Art Dubai

Going into its eighth year, this is one of the most important cultural happenings in the Arab world.

“Since the beginning, we’ve tried to be a part of Art Dubai,” says Amina Debbiche, of Elmarsa gallery, which has been based in Tunisia for the past 24 years, but is opening a second outpost in Dubai. This is Elmarsa’s seventh time at the festival.

The gallery is shrewd. Rich art collectors across the world are in attendance. Galleries are represented from Jeddah, Seoul, Baku, Bangalore and New York. And it would seem that the United Arab Emirates has made a real push to turn Dubai into a city with a thriving art community; within the last two years 19 new galleries have opened in Alserkal Avenue. There is also a big art presence in the Dubai International Financial Center and Al Bastakiya neighborhoods — so much so, that there is now an “art bus” that takes art enthusiasts around the galleries.

“I’ve been really impressed with it,” says Tyler Rollins, who specializes in southeast Asian art, and has a gallery off the High Line. “This is not only for the Middle East — it’s for East Asians, Europeans, Americans.”

Rollins came to showcase the work of Tiffany Chung. “Her work has been really well received,” says Rollins. “It’s been amazing — we sold out of three of the larger works.” They took in $20,000 each.

Expected attendance last night was around 2,000 — and that definitely looked like a low estimate. Ice cream sundae bars and dumpling stations were jammed with hungry festival VIPs. Approximately 500 different artists from 85 different galleries in 34 different countries had their work displayed, and many of them were on-hand to explain it. (About a quarter of the artists represented are from the region.) All told, $43 million in artwork was shown.

Works by Indian artist Jitish Kallat.Francois Nel/Getty Images for Art Dubai

“It’s quite clear what this is about for me — it’s the story of my home,” says Prilla Tania, an Indonesian artist who created a pyramid of silver cardboard cutouts of palm trees and forests slowly being usurped by bulldozers as one goes down the pyramid. “Although some of the people see it not from top tow down, but from the bottom up — which tells a happy story.”

It was Tania’s first time at Art Dubai, but even a rookie artist like her demonstrates how deep Dubai’s commitment to art is: she was in Dubai recently for a three week fellowship at one of the local studios.

The art ranges from big cubes of confetti which resemble large pink marshmallows, to video installations, to silver sculptures of elephants, to older Modernist work from M. F. Husain and Baya.

“There are big, big names here,” says Mourad Salem, the half-Tunisian, quarter-Italian, quarter-French Paris-based artist, who was at Art Dubai for the second time.

Salem was showcasing some of his playful, Ottoman-era portraits of sultans and other esteemed figures who are taunted with a youthful face peeking out of his turban sticking out his tongue as in his painting “Bad Boy on Top.”

“People like it or don’t like it,” laughs Salem. “A lot of people are taking pictures of it—so I think that means they like it.”