Following her art school education in the US, where the post-9/11 climate conditioned her understanding of how the Arab world was being represented to international audiences, Maliha Tabari returned to the Gulf motivated to present the region’s artists on their own terms. At 21, she establishes Artspace (later Tabari Artspace) in Dubai, one of the first contemporary art galleries in the Gulf.

During the early days, Maliha travelled across the MENA region, building life-long friendships with the modern masters. The gallery is built from these relationships forged in Cairo, Amman, Beirut and beyond, with painters and sculptors whose work had found no serious platform in the Gulf. 

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Vis-à-Vis, brought together the photography of Shadi Ghadirian and works by Bahram Jajali. Vis-à-Vis contributed to the early focus on Persian artists working in the aftermath of 9/11. Later, the gallery presented the first solo exhibition of Farhad Moshiri in the Gulf, introducing his practice to the region at an early stage in his career.

Mohamed Abla’s work is presented at the British Museum, London, the first of several major institutional showings for artists that the gallery has developed over the preceding decade. 

Tabari Artspace relocates to the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), establishing the gallery within the UAE’s primary hub for international collectors, auction houses and a growing early community of galleries. The move positions Tabari Artspace at the centre of a rapidly expanding regional art infrastructure, at a moment when Dubai is becoming the principal point of entry for international engagement with MENA art.

Tabari Artspace enjoyed a long and meaningful connection with Hussein Madi throughout his career. This was the first of many solo presentations of Madi, one of the foundational figures of Lebanese modernism, whose work synthesises Arabic calligraphic structure with the rhythmic geometric language of twentieth-century abstraction. The exhibition reflects the gallery's early commitment to celebrating the pioneers of Arab modernism and presenting their work within the institutional discourse of the Gulf, several years before such practices entered the focus of major international museum collections.

Tabari Artspace presents Faces, a solo exhibition of Adel El Siwi’s acclaimed, monumental, elongated portraits, a body of work that interrogates the human figure as both anatomical study and philosophical enquiry. The faces refuse psychological realism in favour of presence, each figure standing as an enigmatic threshold between portraiture, mythology and inner life. The exhibition introduces this body of work to Gulf audiences two years before El Siwi represents Egypt at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Works by the artist later enter the collections of the British Museum, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Institut du Monde Arabe and Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Tabari Artspace presents a group exhibition of Arab modernist pioneers, Adel El Siwi, Omar El-Nagdi, Yousef Ahmad, Hussein Madi, Mohamed Abla and Paul Guiragossian. The exhibition stages a curatorial argument central to the gallery's identity, that Arab modernism, long underrepresented within international art history, requires scholarly and exhibitionary attention from within the Gulf. The presentation places the work of the gallery's roster in dialogue with the long arc of twentieth-century practice across Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and the wider region.

A landmark solo exhibition for Kamal Boullata, one of the most important geometric abstract painters of his generation. His works enter the collections of the British Museum, the Institut du Monde Arabe, UNESCO and Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art. Tabari Artspace is among the first Gulf galleries to give Boullata a platform, situating his practice within a broader curatorial argument for the recovery of Palestinian modernism.

The gallery presents an early exhibition of Ahmed Mater, several years before Edge of Arabia brought Saudi contemporary art to European and American audiences, reflecting Maliha’s longstanding relationships with artists from the Kingdom where she grew up, and her early recognition of a practice engaging the transformation of Saudi society, faith and urban life. 

Adel El Siwi participates in the 53rd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, in the Egyptian pavilion. 

The gallery presents a dual exhibition of Lulwah Al Homoud and Noha Al-Sharif, two artists who have each shaped contemporary Saudi practice from within their own formal traditions. Al Homoud's work extends Arabic letterform into geometric abstraction; Al-Sharif's sculpture engages the body, faith and public space. The exhibition is among the earliest presentations of Saudi women artists in the Gulf, advancing a curatorial position, centred on the female gaze, that has continued to define the gallery's programme.

The Arab Spring transforms the political landscape of the MENA, and artists across the gallery’s programme respond from within their own specific contexts. In Egypt, Khaled Zaki produces monumental bronze figures that process collective trauma and renewal. Mohamed Abla records the textures of Egyptian life through a period of rupture. In Palestine, Hazem Harb continues to layer archival documents and maps, his practice absorbing the pressures of a conflict that long predates the uprisings. In Lebanon, Tagreed Darghouth works in the shadow of the unresolved legacy of civil war.

The gallery launches a second space in London with My Family, My People, a solo exhibition by Mohamed Abla. The body of work emerges from the immediate aftermath of the Egyptian uprisings, Abla’s portraits and figure compositions registering the texture of a society in transformation. The London space extends Tabari Artspace’s programme into one of the central markets for Middle Eastern art, situating its artists within the city’s network of museums, auction houses and international collectors.

Tabari Artspace presents 9 x 9, a solo exhibition by Lulwah Al Homoud, one of the pioneering figures of contemporary Saudi art and the first Saudi to graduate with an MA from Central Saint Martins. 9 x 9 extends Al Homoud's distinctive practice, in which Arabic calligraphy is broken down into mathematically grounded geometric patterns, drawing on the long traditions of Islamic art and the abstract languages of Kandinsky, Klee and Mondrian. The exhibition consolidates the gallery's early commitment to Saudi women artists. Works by Al Homoud enter the collections of the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Jeju National Museum, the Five Continents Museum in Munich, the Green Box Museum and the Barjeel Art Foundation.

Following his biennale presentation, Khaled Zaki presents, In the Wind of January, at Tabari Artspace, the first solo exhibition directly to address the aftermath of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 through sculpture. The work marks an early stage in what will become the Resurrection series, Zaki’s sustained reckoning with collective trauma, civic rupture and the possibility of renewal.

Hazem Harb participates in the FotoFest Houston Biennial, among the earliest international biennial presentations for an artist whose work will enter the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, LACMA and the British Museum. 

Hazem Harb represents the Tunisian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Khaled Zaki participates in the 7th Beijing International Biennale the same year.

Tabari Artspace presents El Beit, a group exhibition bringing together Hazem Harb, Sliman Mansour and Mohammed Joha. The exhibition places three generations of Palestinian artists in conversation to address the ongoing erasure of collective memory. By staging modernist and contemporary practices side by side, El Beit positions the gallery as a pioneering platform for intergenerational Palestinian art history.

Hazem Harb participates in the 13th Cairo Biennale. Khaled Zaki, Mohamed Abla, Lulwah Al Homoud, and Hazem Harb are included in Reflections, Contemporary Art of the Middle East at the British Museum, London. The presentation marks the entry of artists central to the gallery's programme into one of the most significant museum surveys of contemporary Middle Eastern practice.

Tabari Artspace rebrands, adopting a bridge as its symbol, a declaration of the gallery’s mission: a platform connecting generations, geographies and communities through art. 

Maliha formalises a programme of grants, residencies and mentorship for emerging Gulf artists, an investment in a generation of practices still in formation and responsive to the post-oil boom in the GCC. Over four years, 2021 to 2024, six artists would define this moment and reshape the gallery’s identity: Hashel Al Lamki, Maitha Abdalla, Almaha Jaralla, Talal Al Najjar, Ziad Al Najjar and Alymamah Rashed. 

Tagreed Darghouth produces a body of work in direct response to the Beirut port explosion, the paintings circulating internationally and drawing critical attention to her practice.

Hazem Harb is included in Global(e) Resistance at the Centre Georges Pompidou, his second major presentation at the institution. 

Chafa Ghaddar and Hashel Al Lamki are presented at the Lyon Biennale, their inclusion reflecting the international biennial circuit's growing engagement with practices developed within the gallery's programme on questions of ecology, ephemerality and material memory.

Aya Haidar’s Highly Strung (2020), a year-long durational embroidery work produced during lockdown, is acquired by the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. 

Tabari Artspace presents A City Undisguised, Beirut, No Home No Exile, a solo exhibition by Tagreed Darghouth at Cromwell Place, London, two years after the Beirut port explosion of 4 August 2020 destroyed her studio in Mar Mikhael.

The gallery marks its twentieth anniversary and launches its artist residency at the La Serena hotel in Forte dei Marmi, Italy, offering artists dedicated time for research and production.

Mohamed Monaiseer is presented at TEFAF Maastricht. MAQAM, a survey of Hashel Al Lamki curated by Dr Venetia Porter of the British Museum, is presented at Abu Dhabi Art. Samah Shihadi participates in LACMA's group exhibition, Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond.

Tabari Artspace presents Battlegrounds, a solo exhibition by Aya Haidar. The exhibition takes gendered labour as its central argument, that the domestic sphere, the refugee camp, the street and the zone of armed conflict are all sites in which women's bodies and work are simultaneously essential and invisible. Through such solo exhibitions and with equal representation of male and female artists, the gallery has consistently championed the female gaze across its programme.

Mohamed Monaiseer participates in Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Lagos. Hashel Al Lamki presents at Sharjah Biennial 16. Maitha Abdalla makes her debut at the Aichi Triennale, Japan. 

Tabari Artspace participates in the inaugural edition of Art Basel Qatar, presenting a solo booth dedicated to Hazem Harb. The fair's launch in Doha marks the first expansion of Art Basel into the Gulf, a recognition of the region's emergence as a central site of contemporary art production and exchange.

Fellow Travellers, a group exhibition curated by Dr Omar Kholeif, brings together seminal female modernists whose practices have been marginalised within the prevailing art historical narrative. Tabari Artspace launches Out of Frame, a media platform dedicated to new narratives and voices from the art world, bringing artists and thinkers into conversation beyond the boundaries of the gallery’s roster.