CHALLENGING TERMS: Contemporary Art and the Disciplining of Novelty in the UAE

Abstract

Curators and gallerists are constantly in search of exciting, new contemporary art from around the globe. Yet in order for “emerging” art markets to become visible to the contemporary art elite, they must adopt infrastructures and criteria from that world. In so doing, they often standardize and lose the very novelty for which they are sought. These infrastructures, such as biennials and commercial art fairs, determine how artworks are exhibited and which artists are successful, and they codify art historical narratives which complement, rather than challenge, the dominant Euro-American art historical canon. This phenomenon is particularly visible in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where infrastructural and market changes have transpired swiftly across the art scene in the past decade, resulting in the frequent sidelining of Arabic-speaking artists and those who work in more traditional media. [contemporary art, United Arab Emirates (UAE), canon, aesthetics, novelty].