What the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial means for the art world, at home and abroad

An Abu Dhabi Public Art Biennial installation on the Corniche by artist Wael Al Awar. Victor Besa / The National

“There is a connection,” US president John F Kennedy wrote in an American magazine in 1960, “hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts.” A society meeting its moment often goes hand in hand with a golden age in its artistic scene. “The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci, the age of Elizabeth also the age of Shakespeare,” Mr Kennedy wrote.

As the Emirati scholar Abdulkhaleq Abdulla observed in a book of the same name, the Arab world is now witnessing “the Gulf moment” – the emergence of the Gulf states as engines of economic power and creativity in the region. It is little wonder, then, that local appetite for the arts is booming.

November 15 saw the opening of the inaugural Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, a sprawling exhibition of local, regional and international artists that spans the UAE capital and Abu Dhabi emirate’s second city, Al Ain. The biennial, an initiative by the emirate’s Department for Culture and Tourism, runs until April 30 next year and features installations, talks, workshops and performances in some of its home cities’ busiest public spaces.

The intent is “featuring public art that engages the community and enhances walkability”, the event’s organisers say. In a country that has undergone remarkable transformation in the past half-century, one of the biennial’s more thought-provoking aims is to “examine the interplay between [Abu Dhabi’s] modern development and its indigenous practices, addressing the challenge of preserving traditional values amid urban growth”. That is a challenge increasingly faced in cities around the world.

Telling a universal story through a local lens is a fitting goal for Abu Dhabi’s flagship arts event. The emirate, alongside the UAE as a whole, has risen as a major player in the art world. Globally, the arts have had a difficult couple of years, with public funding declining in many countries and the momentum the pandemic brought to the art business slowing down.

Sales in the art world are traditionally driven by private wealth, and the global art market has become caught in a cycle of bearishness. The world’s premier auction houses saw revenues decline in the first half of this year, following earlier declines in 2023. Sales among dealers dropped last year as well.

The growing divide between West and East has also made cross-border transactions between major markets, like the US and China, more difficult. But there are rising art market opportunities in the Arab world. “Some of this trade now flows to the Middle East,” notes a report published this year by Art Basel and Swiss bank UBS. It is an opportune moment for a multitude of reasons, including encouraging creative talent, for the region to put its artists on show.

That is happening in the UAE, where galleries featuring local and regional artists are brimming with visitors, helped along by a strong, attractive economy and major investment in events like Art Dubai, Abu Dhabi Art and the Sharjah Biennial. Saudi Arabia, where Christie’s opened an office this autumn as it continues strong UAE activities, plans to stage its own biennial starting next year. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi’s ADQ has invested $700 million in art auction house Sotheby’s, as it seeks to strengthen its own presence in the region.

Initiatives like the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial benefit from the wider buzz in the regional art scene, but they are also themselves the scene setters. They bring the community directly in touch with artistic expression, inspiring future artists who may not have access to private gallery collections or auction houses. In a world that could use another artistic golden age, that is a profoundly important endeavour.