Doha was the second stop on my curatorial research journey through the Middle East, following the opening of the Diriyah Biennale in Riyadh. Arriving in Qatar for the inaugural edition of Art Basel Qatar, I carried with me a mix of curiosity and uncertainty. In the weeks leading up to the fair, geopolitical tensions in the region—particularly concerns surrounding Iran—had cast a shadow over travel plans. Several major U.S. collectors ultimately cancelled their visits, reinforcing the sense that this first edition might unfold under fragile circumstances.
That context made the opening on February 3rd all the more striking. Against expectations, Art Basel Qatar proved not only resilient but also quietly radical. Rather than replicating the familiar commercial machinery of large-scale art fairs, this first edition proposed something closer to an exhibitionary format: a curated art fair shaped by Vincenzo de Bellis (Art Basel Chief Artistic Officer) and an artist from the region. Wael Shawky, Director of the Doha Fire Station and Artistic Director of this inaugural edition, orchestrated a carefully calibrated encounter between artists, galleries, and audiences. With just 87 galleries from 31 countries presenting 84 artists, the fair deliberately resisted excess.
The result was an experience that felt closer to a biennale than a market-driven event. Dialogue, thematic coherence, and sustained engagement were privileged over spectacle. The reduced scale allowed for time—time to look, to return, to speak with artists and gallerists without the pressure of constant circulation. Works were not consumed in haste but encountered with attention, contextualised within a broader curatorial framework. It was a fair that encouraged slowing down.
Nida Sinnokrot @ Carlier Gebauer
Roughly half of the participating artists came from the Middle East and Africa, offering a rare opportunity to engage deeply with practices from a region that is not only underrepresented but actively redefining itself. Appropriately titled Becoming, the fair captured a moment of transition—cultural, political, and aesthetic. To witness this unfolding from within was genuinely moving. The energy was not one of arrival or completion, but of process: a region articulating itself through creativity, experimentation, and critical reflection.
Of course, major international galleries were present, bringing with them canonical figures of European and American modern and contemporary art—Basquiat (Acquavella Galleries), Baselitz (White Cube), Christo (Gagosian), Guston (Hauser & Wirth), Boetti (Tornabuoni Art), Dumas (David Zwirner), Kounellis (Cardi), Picasso (Van de Weghe). These presentations were strong and often museum-level in quality. Yet my attention consistently returned to artists from the region, whose works felt urgently connected to the context in which they were shown.
Palestinian artists, in particular, were powerfully represented. Alongside familiar figures such as Mona Hatoum (Galerie Chantal Crousel) and Rashid Rana (Chemould Prescott Road), there were remarkable discoveries. At Carlier Gebauer, Nida Sinnokrot’s Water Witness stood out as one of the most compelling installations of the fair: a totemic assemblage of stoneware, steel pipes, irrigation valves, and scavenged materials that spoke eloquently to issues of resource, survival, and quiet resistance. Equally moving were the poetic works of Hazem Harb, presented by Tabari Artspace—an artist I had first encountered at the Diriyah Biennale, whose practice continues to resonate with fragility and loss.
Manal AlDowayan, Reclining Female Body, @Sabrina Amrani
Women artists from the region were notably and meaningfully present. Manal AlDowayan’s textile works at Sabrina Amrani Gallery reimagined the reclining bodies through a contemporary feminist lens. On linen tapestries touched with acrylic, fluid female forms emerge between abstraction and figuration, prompting reflection on visibility, perception, and the representation of women’s bodies.
Green Art Gallery’s presentation of Maryam Hoseini revealed a nuanced exploration of fragmented bodies and architectures of intimacy, where figuration and abstraction blur in compositions informed by diasporic experience and questions of gender and identity.
Sophia Al-Maria’s project HiLux (2025) at The Third Line was deeply personal yet culturally expansive. Drawing on her upbringing between Qatar and the United States, Al-Maria used the Toyota Hilux as both symbol and narrative device—probing resilience, mythology, and the entanglement of personal memory with Gulf identity.
Nearby at Lia Rumma Gallery, Shirin Neshat’s Do U Dare!—the first chapter of a new trilogy—unfolded as a haunting meditation on spectacle, agency, and selfhood, blending moving image with her signature visual language.
I was also drawn to Caline Aoun’s practice, presented by Marfa’ Projects. Her Dreaming of Electric Dew series—large aluminium monochromes artificially cooled until dew and frost emerge—made invisible atmospheric conditions palpable. These works subtly destabilised distinctions between the organic and the technological, granting industrial surfaces a sense of vulnerability and life.
Selma Feriani Gallery’s solo presentation of Nadia Ayari offered another highlight. Her paintings, populated by space-age floral forms inspired by North African flora, hovered between abstraction and figuration. Through dense, tactile surfaces and saturated colour fields, Ayari explored identity, resilience, and ecological awareness with quiet intensity.
Other discoveries included Mohamed Monaiseer’s textile-based works at Gypsum Gallery, rich in symbolic narrative, and Mustapha Azeroual’s explorations of light and perception at Loft Gallery, centred on transformation and duration. This notion of becoming resonated in Almine Rech’s presentation of Ali Cherri’s Becoming Animal, a sculptural and installation-based project that blurred human and non-human boundaries through recontextualised primal forms, challenging anthropocentric perspectives and evoking vulnerability and interconnectedness.
Hassan Sharif @gallery Isabelle
Among historical figures, the presentations of Etel Adnan (Anthony Meier ) and Huguette Caland (Huguette Caland Estate) stood out for their clarity and quiet strength, offering focused, thoughtfully articulated selections that allowed the works’ poetic and formal qualities to unfold. At Gallery Isabelle, Hassan Sharif’s solo presentation The Leap Between felt particularly resonant. Often regarded as a foundational figure of Gulf conceptual art, Sharif’s engagement with process, repetition, and material transformation grounded the fair within a longer regional genealogy. Lawrie Shabibi’s presentation of Amir Nour further extended this lineage, bridging Western minimalism and African visual traditions with remarkable clarity.
Art Basel Qatar proposed an alternative model for what an art fair can be: intimate, experiential, and curatorially driven. Here, works were not objectified but situated—allowed to speak within a shared conceptual space. The lingering question is how transferable this model might be beyond Qatar, where state support and visionary patronage create unique conditions. With plans already underway for a new conference centre adjacent to the major international hotels, the format will inevitably evolve.
Still, I felt privileged to witness this early and fragile moment—not only in Qatar’s trajectory, but within a broader Middle Eastern landscape in the midst of redefining its cultural voice, where new models of exhibition-making signal a region actively shaping its own becoming.
Words/Photos Virginie Puertolas Syn © Artlyst 2026
Art Basel Qatar ran from 5 to 7 February, following preview days on 3 and 4 February
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