Art of the Emirates II, edited by Melissa Gronlund, looks at the production in the UAE since 2016, taking stock of the widening of the UAE art world towards multiple demographics and curatorial thinking. It is structured as a series of round tables, interviews and oral histories, with participants including Zaki Nusseibeh, Sultan Al Qassemi, Antonia Carver, Murtaza Vali, Munira Al Sayegh, Afra Al Dhaheri, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Kevin Jones, Manal Ataya and Nawar Al Qassimi.
Portrait of a Nation II, edited by Roxane Zand, is the book companion to ‘Abu Dhabi Festival’s Portrait of a Nation II: Beyond Narratives’, the ambitious and expansive exhibition that seeks to map and complicate how an art scene develops – and beyond that, how narratives about history are formed. The exhibition looks at artists from multiple generations of the UAE to test the enduring importance of language, home, exile, and community. Artists include Hassan Sharif, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Abdullatif Al Smoudi, Hussein Sharif, Nujoom Al Ghanem, Mohammad Al Mazrouei, Mohammed Kazem, Vikram Divecha, Farah Al Qasimi, Nasser Al Zayani, Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.