A market analysis published by The Art Newspaper on 21 April 2026, assessing what the war with Iran and the strikes that followed on Gulf states have meant for the region's art trade. Maliha Tabari, who founded Tabari Artspace in Dubai, is one of the dealers the piece turns to for a view from the ground.
Reyburn argues that the attacks on Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have blunted expectations that the Gulf would become the art market's next centre of growth, pointing to Art Dubai being pushed back to May and to the doubts hanging over the first Frieze Abu Dhabi. Maliha Tabari's position, as reported, is that the Dubai scene has kept working and kept backing its artists. Set against that are stronger readings elsewhere: a booming Indian market, where a Raja Ravi Varma painting reached $18m, and ArtTactic figures putting first-quarter 2026 sales at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips up 64 per cent at $1.7bn, with the adviser Wendy Cromwell expecting the May auctions in New York to be largely untouched.
Tabari Artspace has run from DIFC since 2003, with a programme built on artists from the Arab world and its diaspora. Its founder appears here not through a booth or a show but as a voice on whether the Gulf's galleries can hold their ground, a position the gallery has come to occupy in the international trade press.