Anish Kapoor, Untitled, 2012, 138.4 x 138.4 x 31.1 cm,
Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York
Editor-in-chief of Selections and founder of City News Publishing Rima Nasser was in the Emirates last week for Art Dubai. This cultural and commercial highlight in the Gulf welcomed 70 galleries and 70 museum groups through its doors this year and spent a remarkable $45 million putting together the show. We were pleased to find that out of the 500 artists exhibiting, 50% were women; as Abellah Karroum, director of Mathaf, writes in his accompanying letter to the pages he curated for us in the latest issue of Selections, "After making the selection, I realised that just half of the artworks I included were created by men, underscoring the extent to which gender equality is crucial to the progress of art and society".
Huguette Caland, Rossinante Under Cover XI, 2011,132 x 104 cm,
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard
During the press tour of the fair, director Antonia Carver settled upon Anish Kapoor and Mona Hatoum as the artists exhibiting the most important works there, while Rima herself most appreciated Huguette Caland's pieces, being exhibited by Galerie Janine Rubeiz, as well as Anup Mathew Thomas's photographic portrait series of women from Kerala, India, working as nurses around the world.
Reza Hezare, Drawing Collection - In Exile, 2008, 86 x 62 cm,
Courtesy of YAY Gallery
Rajaa Khalid, 1951-64, The Big Picture,
Global Art Forum 8 Commission, Art Dubai 2014
Artist collective Slavs and Tatars did an excellent job of curating the Marker section (read our interview with them in the current issue of the Art Paper) - with the drawings of Reza Hezare at YAY Gallery standing out in particular here - and the Global Art Forum brought some of the brightest voices together to debate and discuss art in our region (look out for coverage in the next Art Paper).
