I have interviewed Elvira Dyangani Ose, the Artistic Director for the second edition of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, for a booklet by Frieze.
Her curatorial focus centers on non-Western narratives, collective representation in public spaces, and participatory histories.
Titled “Home: A Glossary for a Communal Sense of Place”, the Biennale opens in Al Ain in October 2026 before expanding across Abu Dhabi. Her Curatorial Focus: Her work centers on non-Western narratives, collective representation in public spaces, and participatory histories.
This summer I went island-hopping in Greece, and come out with the eyes full of sea and art, and a few reflections I wrote about for a few different magazines. This is what I wrote for Le Quotidien de l’Art (in French).
A man in his mid-forties, Negmatov was born and trained in Bukhara and has nearly three decades of experience as a jeweler. His native city has been a center of gold and silver work for well over a millennium, and craftsmanship helped shape the city itself: as many as two hundred crafts are believed to have flourished here, with each neighborhood, or mahalla, tied to a particular one.
I wrote about the craftmanship of Uzbek jeweler Zokir Negmatov for Times of Central Asia.
I have toured for Observer the private collections in Athens and their island outposts, which are reshaping where, and how, contemporary art gets shown in Greece.
From St. Moritz to Gstaad, from Capri to the Berkshires, from Punta del Este to Joshua Tree, smaller, boutique fairs are setting up shop where collectors already are.
I wrote about the so called “Destination Art Fairs” for Observer.
My latest piece for Artsy took a lit of gallavanting. But if you are a journalist, you gotta wear out those soles!
From Marseille, France, to the Greek islands, some of the most compelling shows of the year are taking place in Mediterranean destinations. Taken together, this group of shows suggests that art, like most things along the Med, is something to be experienced with your senses and can fit seamlessly into a perfect day.
The Uzbekistan Pavilion, housed in the Quarta Tesa of the Arsenale, tackles ecological crisis in a way that is deeply personal to the country, but can speak to everyone. The pavilion conveys beauty and hope while not shying away from destruction. I reviewed the pavilion for Times of Central Asia.
“There is a Kazakh proverb that says: a foolish person arrives with noise, sweeping everything away in their path, while a wise person arrives quietly, carefully observing the world around them.”
Syrlybek Bekbota, the curator of the Kazakhstan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale – the most important art event in the world – offers me this thought at the dawn of the exhibition’s opening, and it feels like both a manifesto and an omen.
While these tapestries were once diminished by academia and the avant-garde as mere “womanly craft,” contemporary artists from the Maghreb region in Northwest Africa are transforming the medium in ways that both honor and update longstanding traditions.
Many grew up around looms and recall their grandmothers’ hands on raw wool, their mothers’ crochet, or the cooperative workshops in their region. They attend to the labor, gestures, and knowledge that lived in the bodies of their women ancestors.
Finally, biennales, fairs, and museums around the world are starting to catch on.
Here are five of the most exciting contemporary artists inspired by Moroccan rugs and North African weaving.
Central Asia is increasingly visible on the contemporary art map, and few events carry more symbolic weight than the Venice Biennale, often described as the Olympics of the art world.
In recent years, Kazakhstan’s privately funded art scene and Uzbekistan’s state-backed art scene have often led the region’s international push. This year, Kyrgyzstan is is determined not to lag behind.
The country’s pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale marks its second dedicated national participation. Kyrgyzstan first appeared in this format in 2022 with Gates of Turan, a state-commissioned installation by Firouz FarmanFarmaian on the Venetian island of Giudecca that drew on nomadic heritage and local craft traditions.
At the center of the 2026 pavilion is Alexey Morosov, a Bishkek-born artist who has lived and worked in Italy for years. He chose the former church of Santa Caterina at Convitto Foscarini, in Venice’s Cannaregio district, as the setting for BELEK, the Kyrgyz word for “gift.”
Curated by art historian Geraldine Leardi, the exhibition reflects on water and Kyrgyzstan’s tradition of generosity. The works are in close dialogue with the space that hosts them.
There is an organic quality to the art scene in Tunis, where art grows out of the bustling, lively, chaotic energy that agitates the city’s streets and animates individuals trying to channel it into an art system.
That’s not an easy feat for a scene that can’t rely on any kind of government master plan, but solely on a handful of people who have set out on a mission to build something durable.
L’hebdo du Quotidien de l’Art has just published my article on Burmese artists exiled in France. After the coup d’état in Myanmar, most of the Burmese art scene relocated and reformed elsewhere, with some artists moving to France.
Between Marseille and Paris, these trajectories do not form a homogeneous network, but rather a constellation of practices and narratives, linked by the experience of exile.
Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
