Art Dubai

Art Dubai is the main international art fair of the Gulf, held at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, and since its first Digital section it has given a dedicated space to galleries working with screens, code and NFTs. In the edition curated for the Digital section by Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera, the list of participating galleries included Art In Space, a Dubai gallery that describes itself as a meeting point of technology and creativity, with a multisensory Art Room. Federico Clapis took part in the fair with Art In Space.

The booth was built as a dark structure carrying the gallery's name, with tall vertical screens framed like windows. In the central one, a work by Clapis plays in a mirrored setting: a white inflatable figure whose face is replaced by a smartphone showing a human face, multiplied above and below by reflections. Another view of the presentation shows a visitor standing inside a mirrored space, facing a screen of water and wooden structures, while pale sculptural heads and figures repeat on the glass walls around her.

The presentation brought together two constants of his work: the reflection on how screens and devices shape identity, and the move from sculpture to moving images. Shown in the Digital section of a fair best known for painting and sculpture from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, it placed his digital works before an audience of collectors and institutions in a city that has become one of the centres of the market for art and technology.

Sources

• Art Dubai Digital 2024 curatorial statement — Art Dubai
• Art Dubai 2024: .ART at the fair — .ART