Art Dubai’s two-day Special Edition at Madinat Jumeirah opened on Friday, 15 May. The event marks two decades of a fair that has fundamentally transformed its identity. What began as a regional marketplace has evolved into a truly global cultural platform, and this anniversary edition makes clear where the conversation is heading. African artists and galleries are no longer at the margins. They are defining the dialogue.
For 20 years, Art Dubai has shifted the gravitational center of the contemporary art world, fostering exchanges between Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia outside the traditional dominance of Europe and the United States. This year’s Special Edition is conceived around resilience, collaboration, and regional interconnectedness.It brings together about 75 presentations spanning contemporary, modern, and digital practices, alongside installations, performances, and institutional collaborations with Alserkal Avenue, Art Jameel, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Barjeel Art Foundation.
The African presence this year is quite interesting. Artists from Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, and Togo, are participating by exploring themes such as memory, materiality, migration, identity, and historical reconstruction through photography, textile installation, sculpture, and digital experimentation.
Here are some artists to watch at Art Dubai Special Edition 2026:
Makhone Diop (Senegal)
Diop engages with everyday, including found materials, through processes shaped by repetition, accumulation, and artisanal traditions. His practice reflects on how objects move between practical utility and symbolic resonance, carrying traces of labor, spirituality, and cultural continuity.
Tessi Kodjovi (Togo)
Kodjovi’s work navigates rhythm, density, and inscription through surfaces informed by embodied making processes and West African craft traditions. His practice frequently explores how repetition and texture can operate as forms of visual language.
Samuel Fosso (Cameroon)
Fosso presents works from his iconic 70’s Lifestyle series (1974–1978), where self-portraiture becomes performance, role-play, and historical reconstruction. Drawing inspiration from African American and West African cultural icons, the works interrogate Black identity, aspiration, masculinity, and photography’s role in self-fashioning.
Source: The Rocker
Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali)
Konaté exhibits large-scale textile works including Tombouctou-motifs (2023), continuing his long-standing engagement with political instability, spirituality, environmental concerns, and social fragmentation through layered dyed cloth compositions. His monumental textile installations have become central to conversations around the expansion of textile practices in contemporary art.
Kelani Abass (Nigeria)
Abass works across photography, printmaking, sculpture, and archival interventions, examining how systems of image-making shape memory, authority, and historical consciousness. His practice frequently draws from colonial-era archives, vernacular photography, and family histories to interrogate questions of nationhood, identity, and visual representation in postcolonial Nigeria.
Aïda Muluneh (Ethiopia)
Muluneh’s visually striking photographic works combine bold color palettes, symbolism, and carefully staged compositions to examine identity, womanhood, spirituality, and social perception. Her practice frequently draws from Ethiopian visual traditions while addressing broader questions surrounding African representation and global image culture.
Yaw Owusu (Ghana)
Owusu presents Heart of Place (2022), a sculptural installation composed of metals and coins sourced from Ghana, the UAE, and the United States. The work reflects on extraction, labor, migration, and the unstable systems through which value is assigned to materials and economies. Owusu is also among the artists commissioned for large-scale installations integrated across the fair grounds.
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