Getting lost at Abu Dhabi Art has always been part of the fair’s charm. Located at Manarat Al Saadiyat in Saadiyat Cultural District, its maze-like paths branch out with surreal sculptural forms or abstract washes of colour that beckon visitors into their depths.
Go left and you’ll find yourself in another part of the world at another time; go right and you may just be greeted with a warped reflection of yourself.
In its final chapter before transitioning to Frieze Abu Dhabi, this labyrinthine layout is the vastest it has ever been. More than 140 galleries from 37 countries are represented this year, a record for the annual fair. There is a lot to see and to be moved by.
Running from November 19 to 23, here are seven artists not-to-miss at the 17th and last Abu Dhabi Art.
Juliana Seraphim
Juliana Seraphim was a pioneering Palestinian artist whose otherworldly visual language was informed by her experiences of exile. Born in Jaffa, she was displaced to Lebanon in the 1948 Nakba.
As she developed her craft, she worked as a secretary in UNRWA before eventually becoming a global artist, taking part in international biennials and exhibitions. Her work is now housed in collections ranging the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah to the Institut du Monda Arabe in Paris.
At Abu Dhabi Art, Gallery One is presenting a mini-retrospective of the artist, in a collection of works that took nearly a decade to amass.
“We are happy to present 30 artworks by her,” George Al Ama, the gallery's co-owner, says. “These go back to the 1960s. We have her famous etchings, ink-on-paper works and the mixed media on cardboard and paper.”
Seraphim’s rich dreamlike world can be perhaps segmented into four topologies. “She focused on the horse, the flower and the female form,” Al Ama says.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she began rendering what is perhaps her most known form, the femfleur, a blend of flowers and the female form. Though the femfleur was her fourth and most idiosyncratic theme, Seraphim was also known to work with other motifs, including butterflies and the human eye.
Tala Worrell
Colours, textures and sheens collide with mesmerising verve in Tala Worrell’s canvasses. The Lebanese-American artist, who grew up in Abu Dhabi, fuses oils, alkyds and industrial paints in her works, as well as more unexpected materials like zaatar and sesame seeds.
This contrast of surfaces emerges as the artist reflects upon the divide between her regional roots and Western education.
Her paintings are being exhibited at Abu Dhabi Art by the Iyad Qanazea Gallery.
“When Tala works, she brings together natural and artificial materials, mixing them together as organically as possible,” Iyad Qanazea says. “She tries not to impose herself on how the materials mix, letting them appear as they would.”
Fahrelnissa Zeid
The focus section on Turkey presents interesting regional connections, particularly through Fahrelnissa Zeid. The Turkish artist is best known for her rippling abstract works, but the fair is also presenting a selection of her vivid, large-scale portraits.
While Zeid was a trailblazer in her native Istanbul, as one of the first women to go to art school, she was also highly influential in the immediate region, particularly with the art school she founded in Amman.
“There are some rare works of hers to come to the market,” says Dyala Nusseibeh, director of Abu Dhabi Art. “It is a significant thing to have them on view here. She travelled a lot in the region. She went to Iraq and ended up in Amman, mentoring a group of female artists.”
Jalal Luqman
In May 2024, Jalal Luqman endured one of the most harrowing moments of his career. As the Emirati artist and his gallery – Art in Space – were preparing for a retrospective exhibition, the warehouse that held his works caught fire.
More than three decades' worth of artworks were destroyed, and yet, instead of wilting at this devastating loss, Luqman decided to confront the experience by making something out of the destruction.
“When they allowed me to go back into the warehouse, I went in and picked up all the melted parts, the bent steel of the sculptures. The paintings were destroyed, but I collected the remains of the sculptures, the screws, the rebar and all that,” he says.
The planned exhibition was due to open in October 2024 and, though his works had turned to ash, Luqman was determined to present something anyway. “We were going to call the exhibition The Journey So Far, but we changed the title to What the Fire Left Behind, and I worked on this new collection that was the remains of the sculptures.”
For five months, Luqman worked from dawn to midnight, crafting new sculptural forms from the melted steel. By the time the exhibition opened, he had produced 17 sculptures as well as AI-assisted animations and multisensory experiences that delved into the warehouse fire and its implications.
“It became a comeback exhibition,” Luqman says. At Abu Dhabi Art, the artist is presenting several sculptures from the series, including the large-scale work SilentGuardian, which is unblemished on one side, representing life before the fire, and charred on the other, with remnants of painting frames, a cell phone, and steel bits left behind by the conflagration.
At its centre is a fire extinguisher. The exhibition at Abu Dhabi Art is called Fireproof, and Luqman says it will mark his last statement on the experience.
Twin Seven Seven
The Nigerian spotlight at Abu Dhabi Art offers a riveting sneak-peak into the country’s artistic development from the mid-20th century onwards. Many of the works show novel approaches with working with photographs, copper and textiles, such as in the case of Samuel Nnorom, which creates potent metaphors for society with his Ankara fabric sculptures.
But one of the most interesting highlights of the section is the spotlight on the Osogbo School, and one artist that exemplifies the tenets of the movement is Twin Seven Seven, represented at Abu Dhabi Art by Ko Gallery.
Several works by the painter and sculptor are on display and clearly demonstrate how he was inspired by Yoruba motifs, using them in a modernist context.
Both his Annunciation and An Ancient Goje Flute Player, painted in 1972 and 1979 respectively, show his ingenious approach to painting on stacked board, giving a kaleidoscopic sensation of depth.
Gigi Scaria
Gigi Scaria has one painting on show at Abu Dhabi Art, presented by the Rizq Art Initiative, but it is a mesmerising and metaphorically-powerful work. The work, contrasting playful pastel hues with more earthy tones, depicts a stacked structure, seemingly hewn from rock, from which a network of paths, staircases and buildings emerge.
The work reflects upon the urban landscape and communal movements of his native New Delhi, Scaria says. “I’ve seen a lot of construction and changes transform the city in the past 30 years,” he says.
“Architectural structures fascinate me, and also the social systems, which are actually a reflection of the architecture in one sense. The city in the painting is imaginary, but it is also real. I’m kind of looking at the space between reality and the imaginary.”
Lorenzo Quinn
The precarious nature of balance has long been a focus of Lorenzo Quinn’s work. The reflective sculpture displayed at the entrance of Abu Dhabi Art has been crafted with his unmistakable visual language. Titled Infinite Emotions, it features two arms, grasping one another at the wrist and banded together in a loop, as it gyrates from its base in a hypnotic pace.
The arms in Quinn’s works draw to the potential and pitfalls of humanity, signifying friendship and collaboration, as much as it can allude to our shared capacity for destruction.
Abu Dhabi Art at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Saadiyat Cultural District; November 19-23; www.abudhabiart.ae
