AD Middle East's guide to the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi, written by Aisha Zaman, picks out 23 presentations worth seeking out at a fair bringing 89 exhibitors from 37 countries to Manarat Al Saadiyat from 19 to 22 November 2026. Tabari is given a section of its own in the Galleries listing, headed with the four artists on the stand.
A line by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish gives the presentation its title, Be The Stone, and the piece takes each artist in turn. Khaled Zaki's Resurrection works, developed in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, are described as fragmented human forms emerging from marble. Irene Scheinmann translates the rock formations of Norway's Hvasser island into intricate etchings. The Palestinian modernist Kamal Boullata uses geometry and the recurring form of the dome to evoke Jerusalem, and for Hazem Harb architectural ruins and archaeological fragments become a language for examining Palestinian history and displacement. Harb's #2 – The end of Monuments (2015) illustrates the entry. The four are read as approaching stone through different techniques, from carving and printmaking to geometric abstraction, and as asking what the material can reveal about the places and histories attached to it.
The gallery appears a second time further on, in the guide's account of Frieze Sculpture Abu Dhabi at Mamsha Beach, running from 16 November to 16 December. Zeinab AlHashemi's The Nut and Bolt (2026), presented by Tabari, enlarges a familiar component of construction into a sculptural form, shown along the Saadiyat waterfront beside work by Imran Qureshi, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim and Kamran Samimi.
