$2.2 million El Anatsui work leads Frieze New York 2026 sales. https://ift.tt/yZYtPqD

Frieze New York 2026 kicked off its 15th edition at The Shed in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 13th with a VIP preview that drew a smart mix of collectors, museum heads, artists, and other cultural figures. 68 galleries from 25 countries are participating in this year’s fair, which runs through May 17th.

Among those in attendance on Wednesday were boldface names including Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Fox, and Sharon Stone, in addition to major collectors and patrons including Don and Mera Rubell, Beth Rudin DeWoody, and Glenn Fuhrman. Museum directors and institutional leaders came out in droves, among them the Serpentine Galleries’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak. Artists Dustin Yellin, Emma Webster, and Jungjin Lee attended as well.

The fair’s preview day saw strong sales across blue chip and emerging artists alike. A few galleries reported sales that surpassed seven figures, led by White Cube, who sold two major pieces by El Anatsui: LuwVor I (2025) for $2.2 million and MivEvi III (2025) for $1.9 million. At Thaddaeus Ropac, Georg Baselitz’s oil painting Stunde der Nachtigall (2012) sold for €1.4 million ($1.63 million), while Almine Rech offloaded a light work by James Turrell that is valued between $900,000 and $1,000,000.

While Public Gallery, with a presentation of works by Reika Takebayashi, was the only booth reported to have sold out thus far, a few other galleries including Mendes Wood DM, Ortuzar Projects, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art finished the day with only one or two remaining works available.

And as part of the inaugural year of the Sherman Family Foundation Acquisition Fund, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art acquired a handful of works by artists including Bettina, Reika Takebayashi, Joanne Burke, and Seba Calfuqueo, whose solo booth with W-Galería won the gallery the 2026 Focus Stand Prize. As part of the Sherman Family Foundation Acquisition Fund, each artist will receive an unrestricted award of $5,000.

Below, Artsy rounds up a selection of leading sales reports by galleries at Frieze New York 2026. Check back on Monday for our full sales report.

Leading sales from Frieze New York 2026:

• Gagosian had a strong opening day, placing works by a number of artists on their roster including Derrick Adams, Helen Frankenthaler, Gerhard Richter, Adriana Varejão, Stanley Whitney, and Francesca Woodman. The gallery does not disclose sales, though according to Artnews, a large piece by Sarah Sze was placed on hold.
• In addition to the El Anatsui works, White Cube also sold Antony Gormley’s SET VII (2024) for £450,000 ($606,360); Howardena Pindell’s painting Deep Space #4 (2025) for $275,000; and a Julie Curtiss work on paper for $35,000.
• Thaddaeus Ropac reported a number of sales, including a silkscreen ink and acrylic on canvas piece by Robert Rauschenberg for $825,000; an oil painting by Alex Katz for $600,000; and an ink pen on paper work by Georg Baselitz for €85,000 ($99,250).
• Almine Rech sold multiple works, including a large-scale painting by Virginia Jaramillo, the centerpiece of their solo booth, for $540,000.
• Kukje Gallery saw a lot of activity on opening day, selling two works by Ha Chong-Hyun ranging between $390,000 to $468,000 and another between $10,000 to $12,000; an Ugo Rondinone sculpture in the range of $90,000 to $108,000; and a mosaic work by Julian Opie in the range of £45,000 to £54,000 ($60,650 to $72,790).
• Tina Kim Gallery sold a number of works ranging from $180,000 to $20,000, including a Maia Ruth Lee painting priced between $70,000 and $80,000 and a ceramic sculpture by Jane Yang D’Haene priced between $20,000 and $30,000.
• At Southern Guild, four print works by Lebohang Kganye each sold in the range of $20,000 to $38,000; two oil paintings by Mmangaliso Nzuza each sold between $20,000 and $38,000; and two works by Amine El Gotaibi each sold in the range of $20,000 to $38,000.

Mendes Wood DM finished the day with only one work remaining. Strong sales across the day include pieces from Sonia Gomes, Mimi Lauter, Paulo Nimer Pjota, and Pol Taburet.

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The 5 Best Booths at Frieze New York 2026 https://ift.tt/UfSIiaT

Frieze New York 2026 opened its VIP day at The Shed on Wednesday, May 13, hard on the heels of the Venice Biennale’s opening week—the latest major stop on a packed run of international openings, events, and previews for the contemporary art world.

Now in its 15th edition, the fair anchors New York Art Week, the rolling tangle of fairs, gallery openings, auctions, and parties that takes over the city each May. When the art world arrives in New York, it arrives in numbers: Fellow fairs NADA New York and 1-54 New York opened nearby, and a wave of Chelsea gallery openings just south of Hudson Yards picked up where the fair left off into the evening.

With 68 galleries, Frieze New York is the smallest of Frieze’s editions—London remains its flagship—but it carries the megafair’s signature mix: works by some of contemporary art’s household names, booths from leading contemporary dealers, and a packed opening-day crowd of VIPs dressed to impress.

The Venice overlap was unmistakable. Alvaro Barrington and Carolina Caycedo, both included in the Biennale’s main exhibition “In Minor Keys,” can be found here at Emalin and Anton Kern, and at Instituto de Visión, respectively. Other names that caught Artsy’s eye: Adriana Varejão (Brazilian pavilion) at Gagosian; Nabil Nahas (Lebanese pavilion), in a shared booth between Lawrie Shabibi and P420; Sara Flores (Peruvian pavilion) at White Cube; and Precious Okoyomon (The Holy See pavilion) at Mendes Wood DM.

The mood on the fair’s VIP day was engaged and energetic. By lunchtime, The Shed’s aisles and escalators were at capacity, with a strong local turnout and a notable international contingent on the floor. Celebrities, too, were out in force throughout the day. Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Stipe appeared during the fair’s opening hours, while later in the day, Julia Fox reportedly pulled up in her Dodge Challenger.

The enthusiasm swiftly began to translate to firm buying activity. White Cube reported an early sale of an El Anatsui work, LuwVor I (2025), for $2.2 million. Indeed, it was one of many significant transactions on the fair floors—a more positive opening day, perhaps, than initially expected. “You could feel a real sales energy moving through the aisles. In my art advisor circles, collectors were acquiring at a clip,” advisor Jessica Arb Danial told Artsy.

“Many of my collectors still want to see works in person, hence the number of holds I was encountering, yet dealers seemed optimistic, and there was an urgency that hasn’t been as present for recent fairs,” she added.

Check back on Monday after the fair for our full rundown of reported sales from The Shed. Here, we share our five best booths from Frieze New York 2026.

Victoria Miro

Booth A07

Works by Milton Avery, Ali Banisadr, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Saskia Colwell, Stan Douglas, Elmgreen & Dragset, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Chantal Joffe, Isaac Julien, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Celia Paul, Paula Rego, Emil Sands, Khalif Tahir Thompson, and Barbara Walker.

Victoria Miro’s booth buzzed with ebullient energy during the opening hours of Frieze New York this year, with collectors congregating amid the London gallery’s presentation of works by artists including Alice Neel, Chantal Joffe, and Hernan Bas.

The showcase brought together a mix of historic and contemporary works that spanned painting, drawing, and photography. Many of the pieces in the booth explore figuration and its changing role across art history. Anchoring the booth is Paula Rego’s large-scale work on paper, The Death of the Blind Sister (2007), depicting a monumental, careening female body—emblematic of the Portuguese artist’s dynamic style. The work complements the exhibition “Paula Rego: Story Line,” the largest ever exhibition of her works on paper, now on view at the gallery in London.

Isaac Julien’s Black Apollo diptych (Once Again... Statues Never Die) (2022), a photographic work based on the artist’s film installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), shows a young Black man posing in an artist’s studio, dressed as the god Apollo. The work is a poetic engagement with questions of the collection and restitution of African art. Also tucked in the booth, but not to be missed, are works on paper by artist Barbara Walker, who joined the gallery last year. These pieces from the artist’s ongoing “Vanishing Point” series focus on Black figures in the history of the Western canon, through a process of embossing and drawing.

—Katie White

Perrotin

Booth B3

With works by Genesis Belanger, Alma Allen, JR, Thilo Heinzmann, Jean-Marie Appriou, Daniel Arsham, Bernard Frize, Laurent Grasso, Todd Gray, Hans Hartung, Leslie Hewitt, Gregor Hildebrandt, Gabriel de la Mora, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paul Pfeiffer, Josh Sperling, Pieter Vermeersch, and Emma Webster.

French powerhouse Perrotin hands over half its booth to sculptor Genesis Belanger. She pays homage to a more innocent age of incipient technology in her signature register of pastel-toned stoneware and porcelain.

“The work on our booth explores human relationships to nature, which is becoming more distant over time,” said senior gallery director Valentine Blondel. “As a society, we are progressing quickly in the direction of artificial intelligence, so there has become a prevailing nostalgia for these symbols of outdated technology.”

At the booth’s center is a tall fruit tree sprouting blush-pink roses and pomegranates from verdigris foliage, planted in a deep navy urn; alongside it, floral mosaic reliefs in dusty pinks, blues, and oranges nod to medieval tapestries.

Meanwhile, Dreams of the Luddite (2026) assembles a folding tabletop tableau around a ’90s flip phone. Reduction in Force (2026) hangs a hollow, beige cardigan over a slim green tie on a wall hook—a rejoinder, perhaps, to AI’s erosion of white-collar labor. Above it all presides Darkest Hour(s) (2026), a wall clock with its hands stopped mid-tick, time suspended in what the booth text ominously calls a “moment of uncertain future.” Belanger’s works are priced between $25,000–$175,000.

Indeed, the presentation lands at a timely moment for Belanger, whose Public Art Fund commission at City Hall Park opens in June. The other half of Perrotin’s booth doubles as the gallery’s institutional CV, with works by Alma Allen (artist of the U.S. pavilion at Venice), Hans Hartung (who has a show at Venice’s Querini Stampalia), Todd Gray (whose new commission greets visitors to LACMA’s Geffen Galleries), and JR (whose work will adorn Paris’s Pont Neuf in June).

—Arun Kakar

Southern Guild

Booth D07

Works by Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Patrick Bongoy, Sandra Brewster, Chloe Chiasson, Amine El Gotaibi, Jozua Gerrard, Lebohang Kganye, Manyaku Mashilo, Roméo Mivekannin, Zanele Muholi, Napoles Marty, Mmangaliso Nzuza, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Zizipho Poswa, and Chidy Wayne

Southern Guild underscores its burgeoning presence in the New York art world with a power-packed Frieze presentation. The booth features works by Zanele Muholi, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and Amine El Gotaibi. The Cape Town gallery, helmed by couple Trevyn and Julian McGowan, has built an international reputation as a leading platform for African art since opening in 2008. Earlier this spring, the gallery inaugurated an airy new space in Tribeca, New York’s hottest gallery neighborhood; exhibitions of work by Johannesburg-based conceptual artist Usha Seejarim and Cape Town painter Mmangaliso Nzuza are currently on view.

“Frieze New York this year feels like an important moment for Southern Guild as we participate for the first time as a New York-based gallery,” shared Trevyn McGowan. “The booth reflects the material ambition, emotional depth, and cultural dialogue that have long defined our program. To share these works in New York, just weeks after opening our Tribeca space, feels especially resonant.”

While the booth has plenty of photo-ready, large-scale works, don’t overlook Lebohang Kganye’s intimate and ghostly photographs from her 2013 series “Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story,” where she double-exposes images of her late mother with her own image.

—K.W.

Karma

Booth B2

Works by Alan Saret, Peter Bradley, Matthew Wong, Jeremy Frey, Manoucher Yektai, Milton Avery, Randy Wray, Ann Craven, Dike Blair, Marley Freeman, Maja Ruznic, Tabboo!, Andrew Cranston, Jonas Wood, Xiao Jiang, Jane Dickson, William Turnbull, Mathew Cerletty, Woody De Othello, Richard Mayhew, Henni Alftan, Jacob Littlejohn, Keith Mayerson, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Will Boone, Gertrude Abercrombie, Hughie Lee-Smith, Nathaniel Oliver, Ryan Preciado, Mungo Thomson, Sanaa Gateja, Arthur Simms, Carole Vanderlinden, Norman Zammitt, Ulala Imai, Bill Bollinger

Karma manages to keep its refined edge—even at Frieze’s blockbuster platform. This year, the Chelsea gallery stages a best-in-class sampling of more than 30 artists across modern and contemporary.

"Our presentation brings together historic artists, including Milton Avery and Manoucher Yektai, alongside contemporary practitioners such as Ann Craven and Peter Bradley, whose practices reflect New York City's enduring artistic legacy," noted a representative of the gallery.

Showstoppers include a petite Gertrude Abercrombie from 1938 and a sunkissed and thickly impastoed Matthew Wong painting, as well as prints on paper by Jeremy Frey, an Indigenous artist from Maine. “Permanence,” his exhibition of masterful basket weavings, is on view at the gallery through July 10th.

—K.W.

A Gentil Carioca

Booth B17

With works by Agrade Camíz, Ana Silva, Arjan Martins, Denilson Baniwa, Jarbas Lopes, João Modé, Kelton Campos Fausto, Laura Lima, Marcela Cantuária, Maria Nepomuceno, Mariana Rocha, Miguel Afa, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Rose Afefé, Vinícius Gerheim, and Vivian Caccuri.

Love is in the air, on the floor, and across the walls of the booth by Brazilian gallery A Gentil Carioca, organized around the theme of “red.”

“We decided to do a booth connected with ‘red,’ connected with the idea of love, of passion, of good energy that I think we need in the world,” the gallery’s co-founder, Marcio Botner, told Artsy.

The theme manifests most immediately as a red carpet punctuated by a monochrome snake drawing by the Indigenous Brazilian artist Denilson Baniwa, whose graphic vocabulary draws from Indigenous Baniwa cosmology and Amazonian iconography (a related creature by the artist currently appears on a Times Square billboard).

From there, the crimson unfurls in many registers. Maria Nepomuceno contributes one of her signature coiled sculptures—rope, ceramic, and beads spiraling outward like a circulatory system in slow bloom. A tarot-inflected painting by Marcela Cantuária depicts female revolutionaries, environmental martyrs, and Latin American activists rendered in saturated, almost devotional reds; nearby, Vivian Caccuri’s embroidered mosquito-net works stitch fine threads into a speaker-like mesh that conjures insects and instruments at once.

A playfully thematic booth with bite, the presentation showcases a gallery not short on curatorial confidence—nor on artists to pull off its ambitious premise.

—A.K.

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11 Contemporary Emirati Artists To Know https://ift.tt/cQtk1yS

It’s been quite a year for art in the Gulf area. In early February, the debut of Art Basel Qatar brought international art world attention to the region. A few weeks later, the U.S. attacks on Iran created turmoil across the Gulf and led airlines to cease operations to Qatar, the U.A.E., and nearby locales. The conflict has impacted plans for Art Dubai, which had to scale back its event to a smaller, more focused fair in mid-May.

Artists and galleries in the Gulf had to momentarily close their spaces and postpone exhibition openings. They are slowly resuming operations, with several participating in overseas events, including Frieze New York. Some might be wondering how the U.A.E., which has been described as a new center of the art world, will emerge from the crisis. Yet its achievements over the past couple of decades remain unchanged: Thanks in part to government support, creative activity has boomed across Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi, with each emirate embracing its own cultural offering.

This boom is actually the result of decades of hard work. Since the 1980s, shortly after the country’s unification in 1971, the domestic art scene slowly developed thanks to the establishment of pioneering institutions such as Emirates Fine Arts Society in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, which were established in 1980 and 1981, respectively. Such associations were crucial platforms for new ideas, arts education, and showcases for domestic talents.

My Garden's Details, 2021
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Lawrie Shabibi

Kisses, 2023
Mohammed Kazem
Baró Galeria

This was also an era when forward-thinking artists who were educated abroad, such as Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Abdullah Al Saadi, Hussain Sharif, and Mohammed Kazem—collectively known as “The Group of Five”—broke free from traditional art and the canvas. They embraced more experimental modes of self-expression, including performance art, land art, and Conceptual art.

Such figures paved the way for today’s young, driven, and internationally visible Emirati artists. They observe their country’s rapid social changes as well as world events and universal concepts, which shape both their lives and art.

From up-and-coming talents to established names, here are 11 Emirati artists to keep an eye on.

Alia Zaal

B. 1989, Dubai. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Vétheuil, 2021
Alia Zaal
Hunna Art

Alia Zaal is an award-winning artist who has also curated exhibitions that generate dialogues among the U.A.E.’s multigenerational artists. She earned her MA degree in art history and museum studies at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and has exhibited her nature-inspired paintings in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Spain, and other locations.

Zaal’s mesmerizing, verdant canvases reflect her homeland’s natural landscape and often focus on one subject—a tree or a mangrove, for example—during different times of day. The results are often lush and green. The desert-grown ghaf, the U.A.E.’s national tree, is a recurring, particularly personal motif.

In 2022, the artist completed a residency at Maison Oscar-Claude Monet, a house in the French village of Vétheuil formerly occupied by Impressionist master and water-lily enthusiast Claude Monet. At the residency, Zaal researched light, color, neurological perception, and eyesight.

Afra Al Dhaheri

B. 1988, Abu Dhabi. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

After Afra Al Dhaheri attended Rhode Island School of Design nearly a decade ago, she returned home to Abu Dhabi and has gradually earned international acclaim. Her work has appeared in the Aichi Triennale, Taipei Biennial, and Sharjah Art Foundation. Al Dhaheri recently participated in the third edition of the Diriyah Biennale in Riyadh, which closed in early May.

The artist takes inspiration from her own experiences of girlhood and womanhood in the U.A.E. The country has undergone rapid changes in infrastructure and social norms since her birth in the late 1980s. From delicate sculptures made of glass to large-scale, cotton rope installations, the artist’s meticulous, labor-intensive work quietly addresses time, repetition, fragility, and tension. Al Dhaheri is continually experimenting with new materials: Once, she even used her own hair in a piece.

Almaha Jaralla

B. 1996, Abu Dhabi. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Almaha Jaralla often paints from old snapshots and her family’s archives in order to capture the intimacy of a slowly fading, close-knit community. Her compositions explore memory and belonging, pulling the viewer into hazy scenes of family beach outings and indoor gatherings. The subjects’ faces are mysteriously blurry, like fuzzy recollections. Jaralla’s preferred shades of sandy brown and cool blue evoke her youth in the Emirati capital. The urban landscape of Abu Dhabi, where she was born and raised, is another frequent motif. The artist creates quiet and isolated compositions of the city’s houses, some decades-old. Jaralla has exhibited her paintings at Abu Dhabi Art and Sotheby’s Dubai, as well as her representing gallery, Dubai’s Tabari Artspace.

Ammar Al Attar

B. 1981, Dubai. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Untitled, 2025
Ammar Al Attar
IRIS PROJECTS

Ammar Al Attar is an Ajman-based photographer who captures images of daily life, Muslim prayer rooms, café culture, and various sites across the Gulf region. An element of experimentation is key to his recent photography: Al Attar manipulates predominantly black-and-white images marked by contrasting little spots of color that focus on repetition, routine, and the relationship between everyday objects and human action. One of his most recognizable images is Cycle of Circles (2025), in which he bicycles in circles. The artist aims to convey the importance of slowing down in a fast-paced world. Al Attar’s works have entered the collections of Sharjah Art Foundation, Barjeel Art Foundation, and the British Museum.

Hashel Al Lamki

B. 1986, Al Ain, U.A.E. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Lobster , 2022
Hashel Al Lamki
Tabari Artspace

New York–educated Hashel Al Lamki implements loose brushwork and mesmerizing washes of color across his large-scale canvases. They explore personal memory, migration, and the deep relationships between humans and their habitats. The Al Ain–born painter often injects images of modern, everyday objects into his dreamlike compositions, commenting on the world’s changing times. “There is this constant motion that I try to capture, and I think it’s important to be able to look at that and examine what is happening,” he previously said in a video interview produced by Dubai’s Tabari Artspace. “That’s what my practice is all about—looking with a critical eye as an outsider, but also someone from there, to be able to tell a story of the current time.” An emerging talent with a growing presence on the international art circuit, Al Lamki has participated in Gwangju Biennale, Biennale de Lyon, the African Biennale of Photography, and the Noor Riyadh festival.

Maitha Abdalla

B. 1989, Khor Fakkan, U.A.E. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

The Silence in Carnivals, 2021
Maitha Abdalla
Baró Galeria

Abu Dhabi–based painter, sculptor, and performance artist Maitha Abdalla creates theatrical scenes and narratives throughout her work. Myths from the U.A.E. and the wider region are at the heart of her practice and include the stories the artist’s grandmother told her as a child. Abdalla paints distorted figures who often feature both human and animal parts and serve as vessels for emotions and metaphors for human nature. Her bold, passionate style infuses her characters and landscapes with a scribbly, smoky effect. Over the last decade, Abdalla has been included in over 15 group exhibitions at regional and international venues such as Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, Fine Arts Society in Sharjah, and the European Parliament in Brussels. She recently showed a number of her pieces, including photography, at the “Proximities” exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art. The show brought together over 40 U.A.E.-based artists.

Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim

B. 1962, Khor Fakkan, U.A.E. Lives and works in Khor Fakkan.

My Garden's Details, 2021
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Lawrie Shabibi

One Pink Flower in a Vase , 2018
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Lawrie Shabibi

Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim has become one of the U.A.E.’s most established artists and has witnessed the remarkable rise of the country’s art scene. Ibrahim has been painting since the 1980s. He’s inspired by his mountainous hometown of Khor Fakkan, which informs his vibrant canvases, filled with symbols that derive from nature.

Ibrahim, who notably represented the U.A.E. at the Venice Biennale in 2022, is also known for his experimental papier-mâché sculptures that take on a variety of eclectic, playful, creature-like forms, such as One Pink Flower in a Vase (2018) and Dancer Contessa (2020). A landmark retrospective of Ibrahim’s career, entitled “Two Clouds in the Night Sky,” was on view at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi through last February. Curated by Noor AlMehairbi and Medyyah AlTamimi, it showcased a wide selection of the artist’s sculptures and paintings—including one of the very first artworks he made back in 1989, which featured his first experimentation with ciphers—an intriguing visual language that lives on in his canvases today.

Mohammed Kazem

B. 1969, Dubai. Lives and works in Dubai.

My Studio, 1994
Mohammed Kazem
Salwa Zeidan Gallery

Coordinates-N° DR 1 (Pink), 2021
Mohammed Kazem
Samuelis Baumgarte

Along with his contemporary Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Mohammed Kazem was a prominent member of the so-called “Group of Five,” pioneering artists who shaped culture in the 1980s. Over the course of his career, Kazem has experimented with film, video, and performance, reflecting on personal experiences and his close surroundings.

One of Kazem’s most compelling, multi-year series is “Window,” which he began in 2023. These paintings thoughtfully depict snapshots of the U.A.E.’s migrant laborers, whether working outside in the heat or resting in their intimate quarters. Thanks to this delicate subject matter, Kazem’s series was once described by the Emirati art patron and founder of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, as one of the most important works to come out of the country.

Mohamed Al Mazrouei

B. 1962, Tanta, Egypt. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Born and raised in Egypt, Mohamed Al Mazrouei is a longtime writer, photographer, and painter. He was a student of ancient languages and philosophy at Al Azhar University in Cairo, which fed his poetry and short stories, as well as his visual work. His intense, expressionistic paintings of humans and animals feature thick lines, dark eyes, and unusual shades of color. His figures’ facial features are also inspired by art history, particularly Coptic and Fayum portraiture from ancient Egypt. Sometimes, there’s a captivating chaos in his smudged style and facial arrangements. Holy figures of Christianity are also recurring motifs; his late mother, who passed away young, owned an image of the Virgin Mary that still haunts him. In recent years, Al Mazrouei has exhibited at Aisha Al Abbar Gallery (Dubai), Iyad Qanazea Gallery (Abu Dhabi), and New York University Abu Dhabi.

Sarah Almehairi

B. 1998, Abu Dhabi. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

An arts graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi, the emerging artist Sarah Almehairi has worked in fiber art, sculpture, drawing, collage, and other media. Her mother’s craft shop in Abu Dhabi exposed her to creativity as a child. Almehairi is now inspired by Cubism and Abstract Expressionism; her clean-cut, geometric works combine painting and sculpture as they examine themes of materiality, systems, and correlations. Almehairi has hosted art workshops at Expo 2025 Osaka and displayed a public installation at Louvre Abu Dhabi as part of the Richard Mille Art Prize. In February 2026, she showcased her work in a solo presentation with Dubai-based gallery Carbon 12 at Art Basel Qatar.

Shaikha Al Mazrou

B. 1988, Sharjah, U.A.E. Lives and works in Dubai.

Expand, 2018
Shaikha Al Mazrou
Lawrie Shabibi

There is more than meets the eye in Shaikha Al Mazrou’s sculptures, which appear to be inflated plastic but are in fact made of metal. While they look simple in form, they make the viewer question what they know of the physical world. Educated in London, Al Mazrou is inspired by Minimalism, Conceptual art, and the Bauhaus movement. Through her signature pillow-shaped pieces, usually made of wet-coated steel, Al Mazrou explores color theory, materiality, and geometric abstraction. Al Mazrou has mounted public art installations at Expo 2020 Dubai, Frieze Sculpture London, and Desert X AlUla. Her most recent project, a calming, rippling light installation—“The Contingent Object”—was featured at Manar Abu Dhabi, an open-air light art festival that takes place in the Emirati capital.

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Interacting with art can slow ageing process, study shows. https://ift.tt/sv9FVPN

Trios, 2024
Elizabeth Tremante
Spinello Projects

A new study by the University College London published this week demonstrates that people who engage with art have a tendency to age at a slower pace, with benefits similar to those of physical activity. The research shows that both participating in art as well as observing it leads to people staying younger on a biological level. It is the first study to provide evidence of this kind. The findings were published by Oxford University Press in the journal Innovation in Aging on behalf of the Gerontological Society of America.

The study was led by professor Daisy Fancourt and members of the University’s department of behavior science and health as well as its division of psychiatry. They conducted their research by analyzing blood samples gathered from 3,556 adults in the United Kingdom, assessing their biological ages against their chronological ones. The accompanying survey evaluated participants’ level of engagement with the arts across four categories that include participating in art (activities like painting, singing, or dancing); receiving art (attending exhibitions or events); visiting heritage sites (historic buildings or monuments); or other cultural activities (visiting archives or a library). They also studied the frequency of these activities, as well as the diversity of activities, and found that the variety of ways in which people engaged with art was just as important.

In one of the tests, researchers found that the biological ages of those who engaged with art on a weekly basis had a biological age that was 1.02 years lower than those who only engaged with art once or twice a year. Those who engaged monthly had an age that was 0.8 years lower. However, the research cautions that it only examines the biological process of ageing, not whether engaging with art can lead people to live longer.

“Our study found that it’s not just about doing arts regularly, but also about doing a range of different arts activities,” said Fancourt in an interview with The Art Newspaper. “Each type of arts activity—reading, making music, going to cultural performances, visiting heritage sites etc—has different effects on us cognitively, emotionally and physiologically. So engaging in a diverse range of activities—just like having lots of different plants in our diets—is most beneficial for our health.”

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JR to cover Paris’s Pont Neuf in homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude. https://ift.tt/jPyT8LR

Installation has begun on a new monumental trompe-l’oeil work from French artist JR, which will transform Paris’s Pont Neuf into an immersive cave this summer. La Caverne du Pont Neuf (2026) reimagines the city’s oldest bridge as a cave within a limestone quarry from which it and many of Paris’s buildings were constructed. The French photographer and street artist’s work pays homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s seminal work, The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1985), and will be on view day and night from June 6–28.

Bulgarian-born installation artist, Christo, and his wife and collaborator, the Moroccan artist Jeanne-Claude, first wrapped the Pont Neuf and its streetlamps with 450,000 square feet of woven polyamide sand-colored fabric in 1985 as part of The Pont Neuf Wrapped. JR’s piece will similarly use printed fabrics as well as an inflatable structure that was inspired by projects both completed and unrealized by Christo and Jeanne-Claude such as Air Package on a Ceiling, which will be presented at Gagosian in London later this month.

“My vision for this project is rooted in both the past and present of this iconic bridge,” said JR in a press statement. “I admire the legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and I share their idea that the mission of art is to make us think, to question what is familiar to us. The debate that a public art project can provoke is of equal value to its realization. Art is a transformation, and a way of renewing the way we look at the world around us. Through the dream of La Caverne du Pont Neuf, this is what I hope to make possible in Paris.”

La Caverne du Pont Neuf marks the culmination of a period of exploration for the artist surrounding disconnection and social isolation, which began in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, JR exhibited Retour à la Caverne (Return to the Cave) on the façade of the Palais Garnier in Paris, a similar cave invoking Plato’s allegory which was activated by a performance by over 150 dancers. The work served as a prelude to his piece, which encourages visitors to “abandon blindness and isolationism in favor of lucidity, togetherness, and concord among all” according to a press release. Other works in JR’s series on public buildings include La Ferita (2021) in Florence, Punto di Fuga (2021) in Rome, and La Nascita (2024) in Milan.

Inside the cavern, a sonic composition by Thomas Bangalter, formerly of Daft Punk, will imagine the sound of the monolithic space. Concurrent to this installation will be a presentation of new works by JR at Perrotin’s space in the Marais entitled “Les equisses de la Caverne,” which will run from June 5 through July 25. It will include preparatory sketches, photographs, and collages that set the foundation for the monumental installation. In addition, an hour-long documentary by Vincent Lorca will be broadcast on France TV in mid-June.

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5 Trends Shaping the 2026 Venice Biennale https://ift.tt/0p2tja6

The 2026 Venice Biennale opened to the public last weekend, weighted with politics and emotion. The main exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” was conceived by the late Cameroonian Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh—the first African woman appointed to lead the Biennale—who died unexpectedly in May 2025. Her curatorial team, including Rasha Salti, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, carried forward her vision, which reflects Kouoh’s belief in art as a “shared and sustaining force.”

Throughout opening week, angry protestors filled the paths of the Giardini and Arsenale, distributing flyers that called for the exclusion of Russia and Israel from the national pavilions. The Golden Lion jury resigned, refusing to judge a contest among several countries whose leaders face charges at the International Criminal Court.

And yet, the art insisted on being seen. Across the main exhibition, the national pavilions, and the collateral exhibitions winding through Venice’s palazzos and churches, distinct aesthetic and material threads emerged. As artists engaged the defining pressures of our moment—ecological collapse, social division, the horror of war—several visual obsessions surfaced again and again. Here are the trends that define the 61st edition.

Birth and fertility

Wangechi Mutu’s gigantic sculpture of a pregnant belly emerged from the floor of the Giardini while her video, exploring a matriarchal creation myth, played nearby. Rising artist Buhlebezwe Siwani showed naturalistic sculptures of contemplative pregnant women made with green Sunlight soap, a comment on purity and gender.

Japan’s pavilion featured a more literal representation of child rearing. Visitors were handed a baby doll and asked to care for it. If they changed its diaper, these proud parents would be rewarded with a QR code leading to a poem (drawing a link between artistic and biological creation). The attention-grabbing pavilion is by queer artist Ei Arakawa-Nash, who became a parent of twins in 2024. Foisting these 11-pound babies (about the weight of a four-month-old) on the new “parents” is an undeniably humorous way to have them experience the burden and joy of new life.

Declining birthrates form a backdrop for this artwork, lending anxiety to Arakawa-Nash’s play-pretend. Society-wide fertility crises also inform Maja Malou Lyse’s work at the Danish pavilion, where a line of tombstone-like, cryogenic sperm containers comprise the work Stars in My Pocket (2026). They’re embedded with tiny video screens that show a new phenomenon: “sperm races.” On the other side of the pavilion, a “musical” of sorts plays out across a new, multichannel video work in which porn performers act as sexed-up sperm bank employees. As male fertility declines worldwide, the piece references research that watching sex on screens can increase sperm motility. Equal parts grotesque and salacious, it’s a crazed futuristic vision of where fertility science could take us.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

The unphotographable

Yes, there are naked women in harnesses spinning around a pole; but no, you can’t take a photo. Florentina Holzinger’s Austrian pavilion may have been one of the most-talked-about shows of the opening week, but staff asked visitors to put away their camera phones for the performances. It was one of many Biennale moments that rejected the “instagrammability” of contemporary art.

At Egypt’s pavilion, artist Armen Agop also asked for no photos (as well as silence) as a way to move away from “speed and spectacle.” At the Dutch pavilion, Dries Verhoeven similarly prohibited photography and asked all visitors to turn off their phones. His choreography was all the more powerful for it: A single performer in plain clothes enters the space as if a regular visitor. She half-retched, half-yelled a series of jarringly uplifting mantras, while the pavilion’s shutters slowly enclosed the space in pitch darkness (try taking a sneaky pic of that).

At the Holy See pavilion, some of the world’s foremost musicians—Patti Smith, FKA twigs, Brian Eno—have created a soundwalk through a monastery’s garden. Visitors put on special headphones and enter an interactive journey where each artist’s sound blends gently into one another, creating something quite beautiful, and completely unphotographable.

In the main show, too, sound was everywhere. Kamaal Malak created a synth-laden soundtrack to accompany Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons’s magnolia-influenced display. Even less capturable on phones: scent. A casual visitor could lose track of the number of signs reading “this artwork contains natural aromas and fragrances.” There was one at Cauleen Smith’s video installation work (which evoked an L.A. park), Carsten Höller’s scent based on his parents’ accoutrements, and another waft of patchouli and vetiver coming off Manuel Mathieu’s video installation Pendulum (2023). The latter was also available for purchase in the form of a candle, a quirky way to take home a small piece of the Biennale.

Meanwhile, at the acclaimed collateral event “Official. Unofficial. Belarus,” from Belarus Free Theatre, sensorial details remind visitors of the plight of political prisoners in Belarus. They can light candles, made in collaboration with Ukrainian studio ol.factory, that smell like a prison office, or taste a one-bite offering from Chef Rasmus Munk that incorporates tongue-numbing herbs and evokes the despair of incarceration. Social media managers everywhere, watch out. The next wave of art might be impossible to share on our phone screens.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Water

Unsurprisingly, many artists exhibiting across the “floating city” incorporated water—literally and as a conceptual framework—in their presentations. In an area that bears the brunt of climate change, evidenced by the worsening acqua alta that submerges Venice annually, water is a useful metaphor for humans’ relationship with nature and the fragility of the environment.

On a street between the Giardini and the Arsenale, Melissa McGill’s installation “Marea” presents nearly 100 canvases painted like the waves of the lagoons. They flutter from clotheslines and raise awareness of the impact of rising sea levels on the locals.

In “Matriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost,” American singer-songwriter turned visual artist Jewel included a cocoon-like cast resin sculpture. The piece, Heart of the Ocean (2024), features a display of LED lights that change color based on live-streamed ocean warming data. Likewise, at Ocean Space, a group show called “Tide of Returns” explores how Indigenous groups have served as stewards of water.

Inside the Biennale, artists also explore the vicissitudes of water. Michael Joo’s Noospheres: Expanded (2026) video and sculptural installation includes weathered tubing and pylons used to support the Venetian waterways, while Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka’s patchwork prints and flags depict snowdrifts, fish, and tsunamis. “The linocut prints represent both snow and water,” the artist told Artsy. “Snow and ice are melting at alarming rates, [as I experienced firsthand]...water is what connects us.”

Water is itself a material at Canada’s pavilion, which artist Abbas Akhavan filled with a pool and glow lights. Giant water lilies will grow in Akhavan’s installation, a nod to a plant that fascinated Victorian-era Brits.

But the buzziest display is Florentina Holzinger’s flooded Austrian pavilion. In one water-filled room, a nude performer spins on a jet ski, splashing visitors. In the pavilion’s courtyard, another nude woman in scuba gear is submerged in a tank of purified urine filled by visitors relieving themselves in two porta potties. Holzinger hopes to convey the urgency of rising sea levels. It’s also hard not to think about ocean health and access to clean water. The disturbing presentation and purified-urine-filled tank may indeed offer a view into our resource-limited future.

—Annabel Keenan

Raw materials

Raw materials like earth, salt, and sand, which bear associations with national identity and the environment, play a major role for many Biennale artists. In the main exhibition, American artist Dawn DeDeaux’s Dirt Bowl Table (2021) features 64 wooden bowls of varying sizes filled with ash and earth. Nearby, Lebanese artists and filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s sculptures contain geological samples from an archaeological site discovered at the war-torn Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon. The work points to the endurance of waste, which will far outlast the societies that produce it.

Elsewhere, artist Matías Duville filled Argentina’s pavilion with white salt that contains a monumental drawing in charcoal, a nod to the fragility of the natural world and humanity’s role in altering it. In Oman’s pavilion, visitors find an expanse of sand brought in from the Omani desert under metal shapes hanging from the ceiling. The installation by Haitham Al Busafi draws inspiration from the traditional practice of al-zaanah—adorning horses with metal decoration as a sign of respect, as Omani culture reveres the animals for their utility and companionship.

Likewise, Uzbekistan’s “The Aural Sea” pavilion features sand underneath Zulfiya Spowart’s sculpture resembling a boat, and Zi Kakhramonova’s interactive work consists of a large pit of salt (the material now a pervasive remnant of the country’s dried-up Aral Lake). In a time of contested territories, ecological collapse, and nationalist spectacle, it’s no surprise that some artists bring a physical piece of their homelands to the Biennale.

—Annabel Keenan

Hair

Hair occupies a liminal space between self and object, and artist Marina Abramović uses it often in her work. She further explored this tension in “Transforming Energy,” her major show at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Venezia, where an installation of long ponytails extends along a wall. They’re made of fake hair, symbolizing horse hair and its rumored healing qualities. They swing when visitors stand before them, tickling their backs and creating a sensation that is unnerving for some and soothing for others.

In Finland’s pavilion, Jenna Sutela uses large gray wigs to give a physical form to the five Venetian winds, caused by the interactions between the warm Adriatic water and the cool Alpine air. Different hairstyles give the wigs distinct personalities, and they’re accompanied by a soundscape of wind moving the synthetic hair. “The fuzzy sculptures are also humorous and I hope will offer a sense of joy,” Stefanie Hessler, curator of the pavilion, said.

Hair also appears throughout “In Minor Keys,” including in an installation of drawings, paintings, and furniture by Nigerian artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi. The artist depicts plants in the style of colonial botanical illustrations, incorporating patterns and techniques of traditional African hairstyles. In these hybrid images, she explores how diasporic movement and tradition shape contemporary multiculturalism. Elsewhere, Alice Maher’s drawings depict mythical Sibyls in tangled coils of hair. And Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu combines human hair and tree branches in her kinetic piece Sweeper (2023), a broom that spreads red earth and coffee grounds in circles on the floor, as if tending a garden.

Elsewhere in the Giardini, Marcia Kure turns synthetic braids into a series of imposing, sculpted jackets that hang from mannequins. Each shoulder and bust appears like a disembodied head. Nearby, Adebunmi Gbadebo’s fired ceramic sculptures include human hair, most notably Afro locs, within their multimedia surfaces. The artist mixes it with soil and rice to evoke her ancestors’ experience of forced labor under slavery. Here, the artist reclaims the history and politics of hair for the African diaspora for her own creative expression.

—Annabel Keenan

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