Laura Beaney's Luxhabitat interview with Maliha Tabari, published on 16 November 2021, is a long founder conversation on how the gallery has grown with the region.
Maliha talks about opening the gallery in Dubai in 2003 in order to foster a dialogue between artists from the Middle East and North Africa and an international public. She looks back at early studio visits in Beirut, Damascus and Cairo, sitting with Adam Henein, Hussein Madi and Adel El Siwi, and at a collection of more than 200 modern and contemporary works. By 2021 the same artists she first sought out had entered collections from the Centre Pompidou to the British Museum.
The interview also turns to a newer generation from the Gulf. She names Maitha Abdalla and Alymamah Rashed as artists the gallery had recently begun to work with, and mentions Khaldoun Hijazin's solo exhibition that autumn, as well as a presentation of Maitha Abdalla in London that summer with the support of Abu Dhabi Art. Location, she says, still matters: the move to DIFC placed the gallery among visitors and collectors who read the work in new ways.
Published as the gallery approached its 20th year, the conversation returns often to mentorship, to staying close to the artists, and to remaining open to new forms of engagement, including the digital sphere.
