Artlyst published Art Basel Qatar and the Art of Slowing Down, an account of the fair's first edition by Virginie Puertolas Syn, on 10 February 2026. Writing about the opening on 3 February, she finds that the fair proved not only resilient but quietly radical: rather than repeating the commercial machinery of a large art fair, it proposed something closer to an exhibition, with a reduced scale that allowed time to look, to return and to speak with artists and gallerists.
Puertolas Syn acknowledges the canonical European and American names brought by major galleries, but says her attention kept returning to artists from the region, whose works felt urgently connected to the place they were shown. Palestinian artists, she writes, were powerfully represented, from Mona Hatoum and Rashid Rana to Nida Sinnokrot's installation Water Witness at Carlier Gebauer. "Equally moving were the poetic works of Hazem Harb, presented by Tabari," she continues, recalling that she first encountered him at the Diriyah Biennale and that his practice continues to resonate with fragility and loss.
Hazem Harb grew up in Gaza, took his MFA in Rome and is based in Dubai. His work draws on archives of photographs, negatives and maps, reassembled through collage and archaeological methods to examine Palestinian history and displacement. At Art Basel Qatar, Tabari's booth brought together his Reformulated Archaeology works on paper and prints made from fragments of the former Palestinian airport. He is represented by Tabari.
