Hyperallergic's Curtis Brodner reported on the Gulf art world's effort to project normalcy as the US-Israel war on Iran entered its fourth week, with galleries and museums in the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia reopening even as strikes damaged cultural heritage sites elsewhere in the region. The piece weighs conservators' warnings that Gulf cultural infrastructure could still be hit against the visible business-as-usual on the ground, from Art Dubai's postponement to a later, adapted format to the continued construction of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Tabari founder Maliha Tabari is quoted describing a gallery open by appointment after debris from an intercepted drone struck the Dubai International Finance Centre on 13 March, a block from the gallery's DIFC space. She tells Brodner that people in the UAE feel safe for now but that the situation remains in flux, and that Tabari would move projects online should conditions worsen, continuing a mission of documenting Middle Eastern history and culture that has already financed artists displaced by war and sponsored Zurich residencies for Palestinian artists. The report names collage work from Hazem Harb's series Reformulated Archaeology (2018), shown by Tabari, as an example of that work.
Tabari represents Hazem Harb, whose practice of layered archival collage recurs across the gallery's international presentations. Brodner's report sets that work within a wider account of Gulf institutions, from the Jameel Arts Center to the Sharjah Art Foundation, weighing continuity against the risk that a longer conflict poses to the region's cultural infrastructure.
