At the Plateau of Success
Art Dubai returned this March with its eleventh edition. With ninety-four galleries from forty-three countries, this edition promised to be the most globally inclusive yet. When I last reviewed this fair in 2014, I appreciated its foregrounding of marginal perspectives, with art from Nigeria, Syria and Iran. Art Dubai, aware of its key position within the Middle East region, kept its gallery list short and its vision trained on key non-profit projects, the fair always emphasising its level of inclusion. Especially rewarding was the Marker section that served as an introduction to countries and even entire regions beyond the dominating Euro-American ambit. However, Marker has been scrapped. When questioned about this absence at the Press Conference, Director Myrna Ayad responded that since this year’s edition was satisfactorily global, there was no longer a need for such a section. After all galleries from Peru, Algeria and Uruguay were participating for the first time. So, in other words, when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.
Marker was officially described as a ‘curated programme which focuses […] on a particular theme or geography […] to exemplify the fair’s role as a site of discovery and cross-cultural exchange, […] a feature of Art Dubai’s extensive not-for-profit programming’. It was a subsidised section initiated in 2011. The organisers did much service by presenting artists, artist-run spaces, foundations, and a handful of galleries (often times functioning within weak cultural-economic infrastructures) that cannot afford participating at fairs. Further, Marker was executed without a whiff of exoticism. Experienced curators familiar with the country or region were invited to hand-pick art spaces that, however nascent, deserved recognition, visibility