Seoul hosts the largest exhibition of contemporary Emirati art

SEOUL, 15 December / WAM / His Excellency Sheikh Salem bin Khalid Al Qasimi, Minister of Culture, today opened the “Trivitoids and Visions” exhibition, organized by the Abu Dhabi Culture and Arts Group in partnership with the “Seoul Art Museum” for the first time at the Seoul Art Museum in the Republic of South Korea and East Asia as a whole.

The exhibition highlights contemporary art from the United Arab Emirates, and continues until March 29, 2026, as part of a long-term cultural partnership aimed at enhancing cultural exchange and artistic dialogue between the two countries.

The opening was attended by His Excellency Choi Hoi-young, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea, His Excellency Hoda Ibrahim Al Khamis, Founder of the Abu Dhabi Culture and Arts Group, and Founder and Artistic Director of the Abu Dhabi Festival, His Excellency Abdullah Saif Al Nuaimi, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the Republic of Korea, His Excellency Choi Eunjo, Director General of the Seoul Museum of Art, and His Excellency Kim Tae-kyun, Deputy Mayor of the City of Seoul.

The event is the largest exhibition organized in the Republic of South Korea dedicated to contemporary Emirati art, as it includes about 110 artworks by 47 male and female artists from three artistic generations, covering their creative journey since the 1980s.

The exhibition starts from the concept of “convergence of distances” in the contemporary world, where geographical and cultural borders are shrinking due to the rapid development in communication and information technologies, exploring how new relationships are formed between individuals, places, history, and memory, in an interconnected global context. It provides an in-depth artistic reading of the social and cultural transformations witnessed by the United Arab Emirates, and the rapid urbanization, population diversity, and cultural interpenetration that accompanied them.

The “Converging World” exhibition is divided into three main sections: The first section focuses on everyday and intimate spaces, such as the home, the room, and family relationships, and how these familiar spaces transform into places charged with memory, tension, and transformation. The second section deals with the concept of distance as a lived human experience, reviewing the topics of movement, migration, transit, urban transformations, and the human relationship with place, maps, and infrastructure. The third section explores the intertwined relationship between art and daily life, as artistic work turns into a continuous life practice that goes beyond the idea of ​​artistic production separate from living experience.

A group of the most prominent male and female artists from the United Arab Emirates will participate in the exhibition, including pioneers, contemporary names and young voices, who have contributed to shaping the local artistic scene and presented various artistic practices that reflect the development of the Emirati visual discourse and its interaction with global human issues, including identity, memory, time, the body, nature, and social relations.

The organization of the exhibition is an extension of a series of joint projects between the Seoul Museum of Art and the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation since 2024, and aims to establish an effective model of international cultural cooperation, enhance the presence of Emirati art on the global scene, and open new horizons for convergence between artists, curators and audiences from different cultures.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive cultural and educational program that includes an inaugural symposium entitled “Coexistence in a Converging World,” in addition to dialogue sessions, lectures, meetings with artists and curators, and interactive digital educational programs, which contribute to deepening the visitors’ experience and enhancing their understanding of contemporary art from the United Arab Emirates.

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