The announcement that Frieze will take over the prevailing Abu Dhabi Artwork (ADA) truthful could have come as a shock to some key gamers within the Gulf artwork scene however, in accordance with Frieze’s chief government Simon Fox, the plan was “thought-about for a fairly very long time”. The evolution of Abu Dhabi’s artwork ecosystem has been “a few years within the making”, he provides, and now the “stars have aligned”.
Fox considers Abu Dhabi the “most attention-grabbing market within the area”, citing the burden of the most important institutional initiatives newly opened or beneath manner on Saadiyat Island. He isn’t involved in regards to the native demand for modern artwork, regardless of much less company patronage and fewer main non-public collections. “We don’t want any extra shopping for energy than what’s already in place, which has supported the expansion of ADA for the previous 17 years.” Furthermore, he believes that the Gulf is a “rising” market. “We’re in it for the long run.”
Taking up an current truthful, quite than launching a brand new one—as Artwork Basel is doing in Doha—was partly to keep away from “congesting the truthful calendar”, Fox says. Nonetheless, launching in Abu Dhabi implies that Frieze will maintain 4 gala’s in three months, which he admits might be “demanding”. The takeover is akin to its 2023 acquisitions of the Armory Present and Expo Chicago, however as a result of the Emirati truthful might be rebranded, the “adjustments might be extra noticeable”.
What this implies for the exhibitor checklist of the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi in November 2026 stays to be seen, however lots of the 140 galleries on this yr’s ADA (the biggest version so far and the final earlier than it’s rebranded) haven’t taken half in a Frieze truthful earlier than.
No Abu Dhabi galleries are participating on this yr’s Frieze London or Masters. There are three exhibitors from Dubai—Lawrie Shabibi, Carbon 12 and Volte—plus two from the broader Gulf area, Dastan from Tehran and Athr from Saudi Arabia. Will this determine increase in future editions? “I might hope so,” Fox says, pointing to the rise in attendance of Korean galleries at Frieze gala’s for the reason that model launched in Seoul in 2022.
In keeping with the ADA director Dyala Nusseibeh, who will stay main the truthful, the Frieze rebrand will “construct upon the work of ADA and push it outwards onto a worldwide stage”. In the meantime, Reem Fadda, the director of cultural programming for Abu Dhabi’s Division of Tradition and Tourism, says that “Frieze Abu Dhabi comes as an enormous vote of confidence in Abu Dhabi’s market, improvement and the bigger illustration of the World South”.
