Art Dubai 2025 Opens With A Bold Vision For The Future Of Culture

The preview days of Art Dubai 2025 (officially open 18-20 April) have begun, and the energy at Madinat Jumeirah feels both elevated and expansive. Now in its 18th edition, the fair continues to evolve as more than just a commercial art platform. It positions itself as a cultural catalyst—blending exhibitions, commissions, and talks with a city-wide sense of movement, experimentation, and global dialogue.

Over 120 galleries from around the world are showing this year, alongside large-scale site-specific works, digital installations, and performance-based pieces. The Global Art Forum returns under the theme The New New Normal, curated by Shumon Basar and Y7, exploring how technology, politics, and aesthetics continue to redefine the pace of change. Meanwhile, the second edition of the Digital Summit delves deeper into AI, posthumanism, and the environmental impacts of emerging technologies—topics that feel less speculative and more urgent with each passing year.

The curated gallery sections offer a panoramic view of the art world in motion: Art Dubai Contemporary highlights cross-cultural dialogue and new voices; Bawwaba focuses on solo projects from the Global South; Art Dubai Modernrevisits post-war histories and the legacy of Cold War-era exchanges; and Art Dubai Digital pushes the boundaries of perception with AI, blockchain, and immersive media.

The result is a fair that not only reflects the present moment but also questions it, visually, politically, and emotionally. It’s clear from the preview alone: Art Dubai isn’t simply keeping pace with global discourse, it’s actively shaping where it goes next.

Here are my personal highlights from this year’s preview days:

Art Dubai Digital

Among the standout sections this year is Art Dubai Digital, which explores the theme After the Technological Sublime. A series of new digital artworks debut at the fair, responding to the duality of technological progress: on one hand, a testament to human achievement, and on the other, a source of growing unease as these systems evolve beyond our grasp and distract from urgent ecological and social issues.

Returning after a successful debut in 2024, Ouchhh Studio unveils MotherEarth, a monumental AI-powered data sculpture that transforms live climate data, air quality, CO₂ emissions, humidity and temperature shifts, into an immersive sensory experience. It’s a striking meditation on the fragility of our environment, rendered in code and light.

New York-based kinetic artist Breakfast presents Carbon Wake, a real-time energy-driven installation powered by data from cities around the world. Every minute, the piece pulls energy usage statistics from a different location, creating motion and visual shifts that reflect the impact of collective energy choices. The result is both hypnotic and sobering, a reminder of how data can be poetic, political, and deeply human.

Anindita Bhattacharya’s ‘When The Sky Swam Beneath The Sea, 2025’

In collaboration with Threshold Gallery form New Dehli, Artist Anindita Bhattacharya presents one of the most poetic and quietly powerful works at this year’s fair, a haunting reflection on water as a vessel of memory, collective consciousness, transformation, and survival. Referencing the Anthropocene, the piece captures a landscape marked by human excess and environmental collapse. It balances beauty and devastation, creation and erosion, reminding us of water’s ancient wisdom and its central role in shaping life. Deeply layered and emotionally charged, the work reads like a visual lament, for what’s been lost, what still remains, and the unresolved stories that continue to flow beneath the surface.

Aicon New York Brings Monumental Voices to Art Dubai

Aicon Gallery returns to Art Dubai with a powerful presentation at Booth E5, featuring works by Victor Ekpuk, Rachid Koraïchi, Veer Munshi, Natvar Bhavsar, Sheetal Gattani, Sujith S.N., Shehnaz Ismail, Sana Arjumand, Safdar Ali Qureshi, and Sadequain. A standout is Peju Alatise’s monumental piece If Nigeria will not Wear her Own Cloth, She Deserves to go Naked (2019), which anchors the booth in narrative depth.

Alatise also co-leads this year’s A.R.M. Holding Children’s Programme alongside Emirati artist Alia Hussain Lootah, an initiative launching at the fair before expanding to schools across all seven Emirates.

Clinique La Prairie’s Longevity Lounge

Clinique La Prairie returned to Art Dubai with its immersive Longevity Lounge, offering a moment of calm and science-led wellbeing at the heart of the fair. Highlights include a Detox Bar, SENAPTEC assessments for cognitive training, and a curated series of talks featuring artists like Pooya Aryanpour, Diana Al Hadid, Deekay Kwon, and Alymamah Rashed. Each session explores the intersection of art, identity, and holistic living. With insights from CEO Simone Gibertoni and a look ahead to the brand’s upcoming resort at AMAALA, the Lounge remains a standout space for reflection and future-thinking.

Ruinart’s Conversations with Nature

Ruinart returns to Art Dubai with the latest chapter of its Conversations with Nature series, inviting artists to explore the Maison’s enduring connection to the natural world. This year, Franco-Swiss artist Julian Charrière joins the program with a new body of work reflecting on biodiversity, climate, and how we inhabit fragile ecosystems. Known for blending performance, video, and field research, Charrière’s work offers poetic yet pressing reflections on environmental change. Alongside artists Lelia Demoisy and Sam Falls, the Maison reaffirms its nearly 300-year commitment to sustainability, using art as a bridge between nature, science, and cultural consciousness.

Ruinart is inviting artists to explore the Maison’s enduring connection to the natural world. This year, Franco-Swiss artist Julian Charrière joins the program with a new body of work reflecting on biodiversity, climate, and how we inhabit fragile ecosystems. Known for blending performance, video, and field research, Charrière’s work offers poetic yet pressing reflections on environmental change. Alongside artists Lelia Demoisy and Sam Falls, the Maison reaffirms its nearly 300-year commitment to sustainability, using art as a bridge between nature, science, and cultural consciousness.

Héctor Zamora’s Terracotta Rituals

Known for his powerful site-specific interventions, Mexican artist Héctor Zamora presents a striking new performance series at Art Dubai 2025. In Gathered in me they once again become life, a single performer interacts with a monumental, raw clay vessel, carving, entering, and reshaping it from within. The act becomes a meditation on vulnerability, transformation, and rebirth. Alongside this live performance, sculptural works like Kaminrot (2024) anchor the space with symbolic presence. Through gesture, material, and ritual, Zamora explores the cyclical tensions between creation and collapse, body and earth, personal memory and collective myth.

Tomás Saraceno: Rethinking the Atmosphere

Berlin-based Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno presents a poetic and political exploration of life beyond Earth at Art Dubai. Known for his interdisciplinary work with spider webs, air ecosystems, and the Anthropocene, Saraceno’s projects challenge dominant systems of knowledge and extractive practices. His Aerocene project, which achieved the most sustainable human flight in history, speaks to his broader vision of co-creating with the planet. Whether working with scientists or spiders, Saraceno blurs art, ecology, and activism, reminding us that new ways of living, sensing, and relating are not just possible, but necessary.