Art Basel has named artist Wael Shawky the artistic director of its forthcoming Qatar fair, scheduled to open in Doha next February.
The selection of an artist to lead an edition of Art Basel, the world’s largest fair company, is an unusual choice, especially given that the fair’s other directors all come from the commercial side of the art world. Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s chief artistic officer and global director of fairs, said that this is exactly the point.
“We wanted to depart from the traditional fair approach while still being very much a fair,” he said. “That is for two reasons: first, we wanted to to develop our presence, and second, we want also to focus on the educational development of what the market could be. Therefore, it came naturally to look into a more unconventional direction.”
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Shawky, who is based in Doha, is among today’s leading artists. Last year, he represented Egypt at the Venice Biennale, where his film Drama 1882 was among the festival’s most talked about contributions. He has also been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including at Tate Modern (in 2022), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2016), and MoMA PS1 (2015). He is currently the subject of solos at LUMA Arles in France, the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, and MMCA Gwacheon in South Korea.
In addition to his artistic practice, Shawky was also recently appointed as artistic director of the Fire Station: Artist in Residence in Doha. When he begins in the role in September, he plans to transform the institution into an educational platform that will support emerging Arab artists.
“When Vincenzo approached me about this, I found it to be just something not conventional to happen,” Shawky told ARTnews. “It’s fantastic to be part of the shaping of this professional market in the region [and] trying to make a new format for Art Basel in Doha.”
Art Basel Qatar will also deviate from the company’s other fairs in that it will focus solely on single-artist presentations to be curated by Shawky. As opposed to traditional fair models where exhibitors pay fees based on their booth sizes and placements, each presentation at Art Basel Qatar will be priced equally initially. Those presentations, numbering around 50, will unfold at the fair’s two venues, M7 and the Doha Design District building, which are connected by a public square, the Msheireb, which will also be activated by installations.
“Each presentation will have more or less the same amount of space to begin with when we send out the application form,” de Bellis said. “Naturally, we expect that there will be some tweaks that need to happen because [some works] might require different layouts, so we are going to be as flexible as we can. … The two spaces give us constraints, which can be taken as a negative thing, but I think it’s a beautiful thing to have boundaries from which to work with and respond.”
In his role, Shawky will work with de Bellis and the fair’s selection committee to choose the exhibitors. The newly appointed selection committee includes a mix of dealers from international galleries as well as ones from the region. They are Lorenzo Fiaschi of Galleria Continua, Daniela Gareh of White Cube, Gordon VeneKlasen of Michael Werner Gallery, Shireen Gandhy of Mumbai’s Chemould Prescott Road, Mohammed Hafiz of Saudi Arabia’s Athr Gallery, and Sunny Rahbar of The Third Line in Dubai.
The first edition of Art Basel Qatar will also be organized around the theme of “Becoming,” which Shawky described as a way to think through the question of “how can we think of ourselves as human beings trying to evolve and develop from one system to a higher system, in general?”
He continued, “I see it as an exhibition at the same time. Why is it an artist who’s making this? What is it that he is adding to this? But I think it’s important to involve the artist in this, to involve the artist somehow in the mechanism of making something amazing like an art fair that is shaping the professional art market in the region.”
Since the fair’s announcement in May, de Bellis said the response from the art world has been overwhelmingly positive from galleries, collectors, and institutions. “There was curiosity to our next move,” he said, noting that the fair enters Doha within a context initiated by the Qatar Museums 20 years ago. “The response from the people who have been to Doha already to see what we can produce in that context, and those who haven’t who 1752065817 have Art Basel as a catalyst to go.”