Installation view of 《PROXIMITIES》 ⓒ Seoul Museum of Art
The Seoul Museum of Art and Abu Dhabi Music
& Arts Foundation present 《PROXIMITIES》, spotlighting contemporary art from the United Arab Emirates, on
view through March 29, 2026.
《PROXIMITIES》
features more than 40 UAE-based artists, including 33 Emiratis, across three
generations – a Gulf nation shaped by the convergences of migration, natural
abundance, and rapid urban transformation since its foundation half a century
ago.
Installation view of 《PROXIMITIES》 ⓒ Seoul Museum of Art
Through three sections, collaboratively
developed with artist-curators, the exhibition explores what happens when
unstable and subjective worlds – personal, social, urban – come into contact.
Scaling from the domestic and imaginary to the geopolitical and the elemental,
the artists and curators ask how we can exist in nearness without collapsing
into sameness.
In today’s interconnected world, we are configured into
proximities that exceed what geography can map. In the immediacy and closeness
offered by globalisation, artists work with inherited forms and circulating
materials. Between the regionally specific and the internationally legible,
this tripartite exhibition considers how ideas evolve through movement and
translation - colliding and synthesising views.
Installation view of 《PROXIMITIES》 ⓒ Seoul Museum of Art
The three sections propose distinct ways of encountering and
seeing: the artist-curators were invited to respond to themes that resonate
with their practice; collaborating with curators Maya El Khalil and Eunju Kim,
they gathered peers together to develop positions that articulate ways of
encountering the world.
Additional works gravitate around each section, creating routes
between the artists’ perspectives. These connecting sections become productive
intervals where different approaches to cultural navigation emerge.
Installation view of 《PROXIMITIES》 ⓒ Seoul Museum of Art
《PROXIMITIES》 is presented as part of a
meaningful collaboration between the Seoul Museum of Art and the Abu Dhabi
Music & Arts Foundation. It continues a reciprocal exchange program
following 《Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits》, an exhibition held in the summer of 2025 that introduced Korean
new media artists to Abu Dhabi. Traversing cultural traditions and futurity, as
well as local particularities and global currents, this exchange seeks to
expand a sense of “proximity” between the two cultural contexts.
Participating
Artists: Mohamed
Ahmed Ibrahim, Ebtisam Abdulaziz, Ayman Zedani, Nujoom Al Ghanem, Layan Attari,
and Vikram Divecha, among a total of 47 artists (or artist teams)
