Eight artists not to miss at Art Dubai: From Laila Shawa to Susumu Kamijo

Since its establishment in 2007, Art Dubai has grown to become a pivoting force in the city's art scene. The fair has become a highlight event in Dubai's cultural calendar, attracting artists, galleries and collectors from across the world.

More than 120 exhibitors are taking part in the fair this year. The scale of the event can be dizzying, so we've lined up eight artists to kickstart your exploration.

Mehdi Moutashar

Lawrie Shabibi is presenting a series of works by Mehdi Moutashar that elegantly draws a trajectory of his career from the 1970s to the present. The French-Iraqi artist is renowned for his experiments with shapes, through which he explores concepts of dimension, framing and perception.

“The focus is really on the square,” William Lawrie, co-founder of Lawrie Shabibi, says of the presentation at Art Dubai. “With most of the works, he’s playing with the shape of the square. You can really see the development from what he was doing in 1970, when he was very involved with the Op Art movement, all the way to 2004.”

The works showcase how Moutashar gradually teetered towards the edges of his canvases before foregoing them completely, and considering the wall as a whole as a backdrop for his works, often employing materials such as wood and metal. The approach would become known as his idiosyncratic style.

To trace this development is especially significant as many of Moutashar’s early pieces had been damaged. “We’re very lucky to be able to put this together,” Lawrie says. “Because he had a flood about 15 years ago that damaged a lot of his historical works. To be able to put some sort of presentation together like this, which is coherent and has this progression from 1970 to 2004 is really a one-off.”

MF Husain

A luminary of Indian modernism, Maqbool Fida Husain, aka MF Husain, is known for his depiction of Indian stories and historical figures in a unique cubist style. A selection of his works, representing seven decades of his career, are being displayed at Art Dubai by Delhi Art Gallery, better known as DAG.

“We’re very proud to represent in Dubai, a city that he actually called a second home,” says Kishore Singh, senior vice president at DAG. “We’ve taken works that present different periods and styles.”

The works include sculptural pieces from Husain’s toy series, as well as paintings that reflect on topics ranging from nationhood, Hindu mythology, as well as depictions of Mother Teresa and Gandhi.

Laila Shawa

Gallery One from Ramallah is returning to Art Dubai to spotlight Laila Shawa. The late artist, who was born in Gaza in 1940, has an incredibly diverse body of works, so much so that it can be easily mistaken as the output of several artists.

“We’re very proud, under the current circumstances, to present a solo exhibition of Laila Shawa,” George Al Ama, co-owner of Gallery One, says.

Among the works is the stunning 1965 painting, The Family. The work was among those that survived the destruction of Shawa’s family home in 2008.

Also on display are a selection of her still life paintings, as well as the cityscapes she produced in the 1970s. Another major highlight are 12 works from her famous Walls of Gaza series. The works are colour lithographs based on photographs that she took during her final visit to Gaza in 1987, just as the First Intifada began. During her visit, Shawa also inaugurated the Rashad Shawa Cultural Centre, an institution that was named after her father, an activist and mayor of Gaza City. Shawa died in London in 2022.

“Walls of Gaza had an incredible impact on the art world in the Middle East,” Al Ama says. “To the point that there isn’t any publication surveying regional art that doesn’t mention this work.”

The exhibition at Art Dubai, Al Ama says, is a “mini retrospective” of an artist who deserves to have her work examined and studied in-depth.

Bertina Lopes

Bertina Lopes is celebrated for her use of bold colours, figures and narratives. Her works draw from African traditions and fables as much as they do from European modernism. The Mozambican-Italian painter is being represented at Art Dubai by the Richard Saltoun Gallery.

A selection of the late artist’s works from the 1970s are on show. They show Lopes’s singular approach to figurative styles, as well as abstraction that draw from textile motifs.

Omar Mismar

Among the most arresting works in the Bawwaba section are the mosaics of Omar Mismar. The Lebanese artist often incorporates political themes into his work and this series is no different. The works include Ahmad and Akram Protecting Hercules. Spanning two meters in length, it is drawn from real-life events and depicts two men piling sandbags by an ancient mosaic of Hercules in the Maarra Mosaic Museum in Syria to protect it from destruction.

Beside it is a work created specifically for Art Dubai. The tetraptych features panels of mosaics showing an archaeological discovery in Gaza, where mosaics were discovered during a renovation project several years ago. Another work, meanwhile, presents a mosaic in carpet form, evoking a pleasing material contrast between the hardness of the glass tiles and the rippling textile.

Dana Awartani

Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani is presenting Standing by the Ruins, a body of work that takes its title from the pre-Islamic poetic form wuquf ala al-atlal, commonly known as ruin poetry. An early famous example of this is a work by sixth century Arab poet Imru al-Qais, who stands over a devastated campsite and yearning for his beloved. The poem was a springboard to a genre that mediates of loss and longing through places that have been destroyed or abandoned.

The works Awartani is presenting with Sfeir-Semler Gallery takes several cues from this concept. The centerpiece is an installation made up of clay bricks that have been inspired by designs at Gaza’s Qasr Al Basha. The palace, which was built in phases during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, have been heavily damaged in the past year by Israeli airstrikes.

The central installation is complemented by Awartani’s studies for the piece, which have been produced with gouache and walnut ink on handmade cotton paper.

Mohammed Kazem

Mohammed Kazem has been a staple figure of the UAE contemporary art scene since the 1980s. The artist has produced works across a range of mediums, from painting and photography to sculptural and conceptual works.

At Art Dubai, he is now presenting a digital installation commissioned by Julius Baer. The work, titled Directions (Merging), is the latest installment of a series that incorporates GPS co-ordinates from around the world.

The work is featured in a purpose-built room, similar to previous presentations by Julius Baer at Art Dubai. The walls are filled with co-ordinates from across the global as a backdrop of rolling waves move from one side of the same to another. Dubai’s co-ordinates, meanwhile, will occupy the centre of the space.

Directions (Merging) touches upon resource exchange and the interconnectedness in the modern world, while also reflecting on Dubai’s evolution as a global hub.

Susumu Kamijo

Susumu Kamijo gained worldwide acclaim in the past decade for his vibrant and whimsical paintings of poodles. The works were marked explorations of form and colour. Kamijo’s experimentations have only ramped up in the past few years.

Known for his idiosyncratic use of quick drying vinyl paint, the Japanese painter occupies a unique space in which his works are as humorous and uplifting as they are thought-provoking. His work, Greeting by the Master, at Perrotin is a good example of this, featuring bold colours and a deft use of geometric forms and shadows.