Abu Dhabi Culture and Arts Collection and Seoul Museum of Art conclude an exhibition "Tributaries and visions"

ABU DHABI, 30 March / WAM / The Abu Dhabi Culture and Arts Group, in partnership with the Seoul Museum of Art, announced the conclusion of the “Trivitoids and Visions” exhibition in the Korean capital, Seoul, which was held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and honorary founding sponsor of the Abu Dhabi Festival.

The exhibition, which attracted more than 75,000 visitors, is the first and largest of its kind for visual arts from the United Arab Emirates in East Asia and the Republic of Korea.

The exhibition opened on December 15, 2025 as part of the Abu Dhabi Festival Abroad program, jointly organized and produced by the two institutions, and continued until March 29, 2026.

The exhibition included 110 artworks by 47 male and female artists from the UAE, including 33 Emirati artists. These works were presented at the Seoul Museum of Art in the second pivotal stage of institutional cooperation between the Abu Dhabi Group for Culture and Arts and the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA).

The first chapter of this cooperation was represented by the exhibition “Multimedia: We Are All Open Circles,” which the group hosted at Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi between May 16 and June 30, 2025, under the supervision of curators Maya Al-Khalil and Kyung-Hwan Yoo, and provided an expanded reading of artistic experiments based on multimedia in Korea from the 1960s until today.

During its four-month run, the “Trivories and Visions” exhibition presented six public programs that included dialogue sessions and artistic events that attracted audiences from all over the world and contributed to expanding the horizons of cultural dialogue between the UAE and Korea and enhancing international interaction with the diversity of the artistic scene in both countries.

To complement this institutional cooperation, two visual editions were launched within the general program of the exhibition at the end of March, with the participation of co-curators Maya Al-Khalil, Kyung-Hwan Yoo, and Eunjoo Kim, documenting the exhibition that was organized in Seoul and the exhibition hosted by Abu Dhabi.

These two publications provide comprehensive documentation of the path of the artistic project and the intellectual dialogue that accompanied its development. They also constitute a permanent reference for this cooperation between the two institutions through contributions by artists, curators and writers from the two countries that document the exchange of ideas and visions between Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

Her Excellency Hoda Ibrahim Al Khamis, founder of the Abu Dhabi Group for Culture and Arts, founder and artistic director of the Abu Dhabi Festival, said that, under the generous patronage of His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and during the period from December 15, 2025 until March 29, 2026, the “Trifoods and Visions” exhibition represented a pivotal station in the framework of historical cooperation between the group and the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), and embodied a comprehensive forum. For artists from the Emirates and Korea, in the capital, Seoul, to tell the story of the meeting of thought and the bond of culture, and to create a magical movement with an immortal legacy, as the exhibition brought together 110 works of art by 47 artists from three generations, including 33 Emirati artists.

She added that the exhibition shed light on five decades of the emergence and development of contemporary Emirati art, and highlighted, in its three sections, creative visions that reflected a wide spectrum of contrasting ideas and a multiplicity of experiences and paths, in contexts of exchange and integration, juxtaposition and dialogue, between the constant and the shifting, the combined and the different. Through it, Emirati artists also preserved the originality of their visions and contributed to enriching Regional and global contexts, between an ancient heritage and an advanced future, and their works opened up to different echoes and new dimensions, with an idea that builds civilization and enhances human communication.

The first edition is titled “Multiple Dialogues: We Are All Open Circles,” and comes in parallel with the exhibition that was held in Abu Dhabi as part of the institutional cooperation between the Abu Dhabi Group for Culture and Arts and the Seoul Museum of Art.

It showcases multimedia artistic experiences from Korea spanning more than four decades, and includes 48 artworks by 29 artists, with color photographs of the works, installation scenes, and detailed documentation of them, in addition to articles and critical readings that intersect in a critical dialogue with the works on display, in addition to the curators’ articles that formed the intellectual framework of the exhibition.

The second edition, “Multiple Dialogues: Tributaries and Visions,” presents five decades of contemporary Emirati art work across three generations of artists, and comes as a critical reference accompanying the exhibition curated by Maya Al-Khalil and Eunjoo Kim, and includes 110 artworks by 47 artists from the Emirates, and through contributions from artists residing in the Emirates and writers from Korea, the edition brings together multiple visions formed across spaces of convergence and difference, where artistic experiences juxtapose. affected by the rapid social transformations in the UAE, with readings provided by Korean writers from their historical and cultural perspective.

Curator Maya Al-Khalil said that the cooperation was launched with the aim of understanding what happens in moments of encounter between cultures, as true exchange is not based on transferring one scene to another, but rather on mutual interaction between the two parties, pointing out that the publications sought to present this interaction, by putting artistic practices in the UAE in dialogue with Korean visions, and vice versa, and the writers were given an open space to interact with the ideas of each exhibition from their own perspective, without specific topics or prior directives.

For her part, curator Kyung Hwan Yoo said that the exhibition and its artistic edition are linked to an integrated relationship, as they complement each other naturally.

For her part, curator Eunjoo Kim said that the aim of this cooperation was not simply to introduce contemporary art from the UAE to Korea, but rather to build a path that allows different cultural contexts to meet and reread them from new angles.

She pointed out that the “Trivories and Visions” exhibition provided the Korean audience with a space to learn about the diversity of artistic practices by artists residing in the UAE, and put multiple cultural experiences and visions in an open dialogue, pointing out that the publication “Multiple Dialogues: Tributaries and Visions” brought together artists, curators and writers.

Through this partnership with the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), the Abu Dhabi Group for Culture and Arts confirms the UAE’s commitment to promoting cultural dialogue and building bridges of communication between artists in the UAE and the Republic of Korea, in support of joint creativity and strengthening human ties through art and knowledge.

This institutional cooperation comes within the framework of the cultural diplomacy mission undertaken by the group, which enhances the Emirati and Arab presence on the global cultural scene through sustainable artistic partnerships and continuous creative cooperation.

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