{"id":112226,"date":"2023-07-16T23:55:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-16T20:55:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artviews.gr\/?p=112226"},"modified":"2026-04-16T22:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T19:55:20","slug":"sharon-toval-postcolonial-shift-or-strategic-reappropriation-cultural-power-and-museum-diplomacy-in-the-gulf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artviews.gr\/en\/sharon-toval-postcolonial-shift-or-strategic-reappropriation-cultural-power-and-museum-diplomacy-in-the-gulf\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharon Toval: Postcolonial Shift or Strategic Reappropriation? Cultural Power and Museum Diplomacy in the Gulf"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Curator: Sharon Toval<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sharon Toval<\/strong> is a contemporary art curator and researcher with an international presence, whose practice is shaped by multicultural experiences. With roots in France, he has worked across Europe and the Middle East,<\/strong> focusing on fostering dialogue between diverse artistic and social contexts.<\/h3>\n

His work explores issues of identity, cultural transition, and geopolitical narratives, while also examining the role of institutions and artistic ecosystems in shaping contemporary art. In the United Arab Emirates, he has been associated with initiatives such as the Al Qasimi Foundation<\/strong>, actively contributing to the development of the local art scene through the transfer of curatorial knowledge and international practices.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he teaches Exhibition Management in the postgraduate program of Art History and Archaeology at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi,<\/strong> participating in the education of a new generation of art professionals.<\/p>\n

His thinking and curatorial approach are central to contemporary discussions of the relationship between the local and the global, as well as to the role of art as a tool of cultural diplomacy.<\/p>\n

His statements in this interview serve as a valuable resource for artists and curators seeking to understand the dynamics and prospects currently shaping the Middle East, highlighting the opportunities emerging within a rapidly evolving artistic landscape.<\/p>\n

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The Gulf as the new laboratory of cultural power: patronage, soft power and the post-Western art world<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

-Are the Gulf states becoming cultural colonies of Western art, or are they learning its mechanisms to replace it?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

-Over the last 15 years, my international curatorial activities have led me to research zones of tension, where histories, power structures, and identities collide. Through exhibitions in Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S., I use the exhibition space as a site of negotiation between center and periphery, heritage and global contemporary language, visibility and erasure.<\/p>\n

This has brought me to work with the Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research in Ras Al Khaimah, since 2021,<\/strong> where I curate exhibitions as part of the annual Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival and lately the first edition of the Ras Al Khaimah Art Biennale: \u201cCivilizations: Under the Same Sky\u201d. My exhibitions there explore tensions between local heritage and global contemporary language, where contemporary and often technologically driven artworks coexist inside historically and culturally charged environments, such as heritage architecture and traditional urban fabrics (Al Jazeera Al Hamra Heritage Village)<\/strong>. By placing installation, video, and AI\u2011related works in dialogue with local histories, I wanted to ask how different civilizations coexist in the present: not as a linear narrative, but as overlapping temporalities and competing imaginations of the future.<\/p>\n

My vision of the cultural and artistic activities in the UAE<\/strong> permits me to envision the Gulf states in general as both importing Western cultural models<\/strong> and actively adjusting them for the local own social, economic, and geopolitical purposes. By licensing major Western brands and formats, \u201cuniversal\u201d museums, biennales, art fairs, and blue\u2011chip auction circuits, they appear, at first glance, as cultural colonies of Western art, reliant on its canons, advisors, and display logics. In this sense, much of what we see can be read as a soft\u2011power extension of Western modernity; European and North American narratives are re-staged in spectacular new architectures, often in contexts where local publics have limited space for dissenting cultural voices.<\/p>\n

At the same time, those very mechanisms are being learned, internalized, and strategically repurposed. Gulf institutions are rapidly becoming producers of their own canons, collecting and exhibiting Arab modernism and contemporary regional practices, foregrounding Gulf histories and epistemologies, and framing themselves as mediators and historiography leaders rather than mere recipients of \u201cglobal\u201d culture.<\/p>\n

Curators, collectors, and policy\u2011makers in the region increasingly articulate an explicit ambition to shift the art\u2011historical and institutional center of gravity eastwards.<\/strong> So, the question is not \u201ccolony now, replacement later,\u201d but a more complex present, Western art structures function as a transitional operating system, while Gulf actors’ experiment, sometimes subtly, sometimes very visibly, with provincializing Western centrality and authoring new, region-driven definitions of what counts as global art.<\/p>\n

Toval’s personal entry point<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Starting from your lived experience in the United Arab Emirates:<\/p>\n

-You have been curating in the UAE since 2021. What immediately struck you about the art ecosystem there compared to Europe or Israel?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

-What we call today the \u201cecosystem\u201d of the art world is an extension of the notion of the Artworld,<\/strong> first articulated by Arthur Danto<\/strong> in his seminal 1964 essay The Artworld<\/em>, published in The Journal of Philosophy<\/em>. Danto argued that what makes something art is not its inherent aesthetic qualities, but its recognition within an institutional and interpretive framework, a network of critics, curators, collectors, galleries, museums, and historians who collectively produce meaning. This institutional and discursive network is what we now often describe as the art ecosystem.<\/p>\n

In addition to my curatorial work in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, I recently began teaching Exhibition Project Management in the master’s program in Art History and Archaeology at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi.<\/strong> Some of my students were already active in the art field, and some have interned in galleries and cultural institutions, gaining first-hand experience of this ecosystem in practice.
\nWhat is particularly striking about the UAE art scene is its diversity. Each Emirate has developed its own cultural identity. At times, they seem to compete, and at other times, they complement one another.<\/p>\n

Dubai is largely driven by internationally established commercial galleries such as Perrotin, Leila Heller Gallery, Isabelle van den Eynde Gallery<\/strong>, and Carbon 12<\/strong>, among others. It also hosts Art Dubai,<\/strong> which plays a central role in the regional art market.<\/p>\n

Abu Dhabi,<\/strong> by contrast, is defined by its major institutional projects. The Louvre Abu Dhabi has become a landmark museum in the region, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is scheduled to open on Saadiyat Island<\/strong>. Cultural spaces such as Manarat Al Saadiyat<\/strong> further contribute to the Emirate\u2019s institutional profile. Another major development in Abu Dhabi\u2019s art calendar concerns its flagship art fair. For nearly two decades, Abu Dhabi Art, first launched in 2007, has been a cornerstone of the UAE\u2019s cultural scene. Beginning in 2026, it will be replaced by Frieze Abu Dhabi, marking the first edition of Frieze in the Middle East<\/strong> and signaling a new phase in the Emirate\u2019s integration into the global art market.<\/p>\n

Sharjah<\/strong> has positioned itself differently, focusing on non-profit institutions and critical contemporary discourse. The Sharjah Art Foundation and the long-established Sharjah Biennial, founded in 1993, are internationally recognized platforms for research-driven contemporary art.
\nRas Al Khaimah has historically had a more locally oriented cultural scene.<\/p>\n

Through my work with the Al Qasimi Foundation,<\/strong> we have been introducing international contemporary art practices and curatorial methodologies, contributing to the Emirate\u2019s emergence as a new cultural actor. RAK is gradually positioning itself within the broader contemporary art landscape of the UAE.<\/strong> On another note, RAK Art Festival places a strong emphasis on democratizing the arts to less privileged crowds through its educational programs for schools during the Festival each year.<\/p>\n

One key difference between the UAE and cities such as New York, Berlin, London, Paris, Athens, or Tel Aviv is the relative absence of a strong alternative scene, meaning non-profit galleries, artist-run spaces, and curator-led independent initiatives. In many global art capitals, these alternative spaces function as experimental laboratories and engines of artistic innovation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the UAE, this layer of the ecosystem is still in the process of developing. Taken together, each Emirate represents a distinct ecosystem, yet collectively they form a unified national cultural landscape. Another difference, probably due to the early stage maturity of these art scenes in the UAE, is that all these institutional ecosystems are still not translating into helping the next generation or those less privileged to appreciate art. There is still a lack of programs in schools and qualified art teachers, and it remains a space for elites.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n