In his sixth-century Muallaqa, Arab poet Imru Al Qais stands before an abandoned campsite, looking for traces of his beloved amid the markings and antelope droppings in the sand, crying over “the memory of a lover and a place.”
The account epitomises the poetic trope wuquf ala al-atlal, or “standing by the ruins”. It has clear echoes in contemporary Arab art, across mediums and forms that reflect on ongoing conflicts and the struggle to adapt to loss.
But perhaps none do it as directly as Dana Awartani’s series Standing by the Ruins, several works from which are on display at Art Dubai 2026, in an exhibition by the Dubai Collection that reflects on belonging and community.
The works are made from gouache and walnut ink on cotton paper. They feature designs inspired by the tiles from Gaza’s Qasr Al Basha. The fort, a stronghold in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, was destroyed by Israeli air strikes in 2024.
It isn’t clear how accurately Awartani replicates the tiles in her drawings. But perhaps specificity is not the point. The ochre, black and beige designs bloom from guidelines left uncoloured – expressing the violence of erasure and the struggle to recollect.
The pieces are hung beside works from Seher Shah’s Ruined Score series, which ruminate on the legacies of India’s partition. The lines allude to architectural drawings as much as they do sheet music, staves mangled, notes strewn.
Asma Belhamar’s Visions on the Periphery is shown alongside these works. Made from beechwood, the sculptures bring to mind balustrade designs from the region. However, like with the previous works, they have been disfigured, with arches elongated and circles rippling into orbs. The piece is an embodiment of how personal memories twist and transform over time.
Each of the above pieces come from a different private collection. They interact with one another – sustaining similar themes across different political and personal landscapes – in a proximity that was made possible by the Dubai Collection.
The initiative by Dubai Culture was founded in 2020 with the mission of bringing works from private collections to the public sphere. It is managed by the Art Dubai Group.
“It is the first institutional initiative of its kind here,” says Sossy Dikijian, head of Dubai Collection. “We work with collectors on an innovative loan programme. We look at their collections and come up with themes and ideas of how we can promote it.”
About 140 private collectors contribute to the initiative, which has amassed more than 1,400 artworks to date. The works are accessible online and, Dikijian says, offers “a repository of research and curatorial ideas. And something for the public to engage with.”
The Dubai Collection has been taking part in Art Dubai for the past three years. Of course, this iteration of the fair is distinct, not only because Art Dubai is marking its 20th event, but also because the Iran war forced organisers and participants alike to rethink several aspects of the fair.
“There were a lot of changes,” Dikijian says. “Everything from the space, the layout, the concept, the title, the message we wanted to send forward. It was day by day, we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
While the aforementioned examples ruminate on loss and memory, most of the works in the exhibition reflect on ideas of belonging and of community-building, especially during transformative times.
Titled Made Forward, the exhibition brings together works from 20 private collections, and by artists from West Asia, North Africa and South Asia. It shows how artists document changes in their immediate environment, often adapting their artistic practice to respond to specific contexts.
“Made Forward speaks to the poetics of coming together, through the architectural, the social, the political, the personal and the collective,” the exhibition literature reads. “What is built together also endures together.”
The exhibition is segmented into three sections. It opens with In the Faces of the City, with paintings featuring everyday people in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.
“It talks about a moment in the Arab world that was characterised by massive transformation,” associate curator Jumanah Abbas says. “Cities were on the rise, but these artists documenting the people instead of the progress. Gazbia Sirry, for instance, documented the women in Egypt, and Brahim Dhahak focused on everyday streets in Tunisia.”
Here again we see arresting pairings. Louay Kayyali’s 1974 Server with Tray, a forlorn-looking boy depicted on the artist’s signature chipboard, is hung beside Leila Nseir’s 2015 Hunger, showing an emaciated family seated around a table bearing the bones of a single fish.
The next section, In Forms of Knowing, features the works by Awartani, Shah and Belhamar. While those works delve into the tensions of loss, several others express personal and communal ways of seeing the world, such as with Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s playful rethinking of the form of a ghaf tree, a mixed-media piece by Afra Al Dhaheri depicting her studio, as well as Faces by Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, a dizzying 2017 oil painting that is inspired by the zar ritual – an exorcism rite performed by women in central Sudan.
In Time as Witness, the third and concluding section, confronts sociopolitical issues through unexpected means. Aya Haider, for instance, reflects on the electricity shortages in Lebanon through her 2019 installation I Love You as Much as the Power Cuts Daily, the title of the work spelt out in blinding, flickering neon.
Larissa Sansour’s Olive Tree, meanwhile, is a lightbox photograph that depicts a fictionalised future. An olive tree growing from the polished concrete floor of a high-rise building as a sign of resistance in a dystopian setting. The scene out the window shows Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock shrine glistening under the overcast sky.
“The section shows how when old structures, like the political, the environmental and the economical collapse, time stands as a witness,” Abbas says. “We wanted to end on an optimistic note of Larissa Sansour imagining a possible future of a liberated Palestine.”
Art Dubai 2026 is open to the public on Friday from 4pm to 9pm, Saturday from 2pm to 9pm, and Sunday from noon to 6pm