Podcast | Art Dubai 2025: is the city emerging as a global hub for digital art?

Art Dubai © Spark Media
Welcome to In Focus, a new podcast from The Art Newspaper produced in partnership with the world's leading arts and culture organisations, institutions and events. Each episode will shine a spotlight on the people and places making some of the biggest impact in the industry.
Dubai is one of the world’s leading cities in terms of digital innovation—with state-led strategies around the integration of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrencies and the metaverse. But does the art scene in the emirate reflect the same futuristic focus? In 2022, Art Dubai—the Middle East's leading international art fair—launched Art Dubai Digital, a curated section of the fair dedicated to pioneering artists, collectives, galleries and platforms. This first episode of The Art Newspaper In Focus, in partnership with Art Dubai, explores Dubai’s creative and technological scene to find out what inspired this digital art focus at the fair and ask: is Dubai becoming a global hub for digital art?
Art Dubai’s artistic director Pablo del Val joins art writer and editor Aimee Dawson, the episode host, to delve into the city of Dubai itself and discuss how the fair has been changing each year as the digital art scene has been rapidly developing.
With galleries also riding the waves of changes in the digital space, Mila Askarova, the founder of London- and Baku-based Gazelli Art House, shares insights into running GAZELL.iO, the digital arm of the gallery that is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.
And finally BREAKFAST, a Brooklyn-based artist known for using real-time data from the natural world to create digitally controlled kinetic artworks, shares how and why he makes his works; his experiences of exhibiting in Dubai; and his giant climate change-themed sculpture for Art Dubai Digital 2025, titled Carbon Wake.
• Art Dubai, 18 – 20 April, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai
The event's 15th edition dedicated a whole building to the "rapidly expanding digital arts space"
The new scheme, managed by Art Dubai, will provide up to half the stand costs for galleries to exhibit at major fairs
We talk to Andrew Wilson at the Tate and Harriet Vyner about one of the greatest albums, and album covers, of all time. And we visit the new Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai. Produced in association with Bonhams, auctioneers since 1793.
Dealers at the fair are hopeful for good sales, despite the prospect of a global recession

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