"Becoming" as a Framework: Inside the First Art Basel Qatar

The inaugural edition of Art Basel Qatar, brings together 87 galleries from 31 countries and territories, including 16 first-time participants, presenting the best of their programs.
With 87 galleries presenting just 84 artists, Art Basel Qatar 2026 deliberately resisted excess. The fair proved not only resilient but also quietly radical. Rather than replicating the familiar commercial machinery of large-scale art fairs, this first edition proposed something closer to an exhibitionary format: a curated art fair with a carefully calibrated encounter between artists, galleries, and audiences.

Conceived under the curatorial direction of Egyptian-born artist Wael Shawky, Art Basel Qatar’s first edition departs from the traditional booth model to present an open-format exhibition in which artist presentations respond to a central curatorial theme of Becoming.

Focusing on solo presentations, the fair showcases 2 Solo Shows from 2 Iranian artists. Perrotin participates in the first edition of Art Basel Qatar with a solo presentation by Ali Banisadr and Dubai’s Green Art Gallery presents a series of new paintings by Maryam Hoseini.

On this occasion, Ali Banisadr presents Al-Kīmiyā: The Art of Transformation, an exhibition that unfolds across painting, sculpture, and works on paper to examine humanity’s enduring drive toward becoming, toward change, mutation, and renewal. The title draws from al-kīmiyā, the Arabic root of alchemy, understood not merely as material transmutation but as a philosophical and spiritual process: a reconfiguration of perception, knowledge, and being.
Most of the works in the exhibition are nocturnal where moons rise over winter landscapes; figures gather in forests; storms churn unseen. Night, for Banisadr, is not the absence of vision but a condition in which transformation becomes possible—where consciousness loosens, symbols migrate, and latent structures surface.
Dubai’s Green Art Gallery’s presentation brings together a new series of multi-panel paintings by Maryam Hoseini that examine becoming through duration, sequencing, and fragmentation. Each work is composed of three or four painted wood panels that form a continuous field across space. Within these works, the body does not resolve into a singular form; it is stretched, repeated, and held across patterned surfaces and architectural fields. Landscapes drift in and out of clarity, creating moments of tension and disorientation that resist a singular point of arrival.
Hoseini’s practice is rooted in liminality, hybridity, and dissonance: conditions in which identity, memory, and presence are continually reconfigured across geographies, genders, and languages. Figures operate simultaneously as bodily forms and structural elements. Sensuality and violence remain entangled, as bodies are both carried by and compressed within the structures that frame them.

In its first edition, Art Basel Qatar offered a focused and thoughtfully curated alternative to the conventional art fair model. Centered on the theme of Becoming, the fair emphasized solo presentations and dialogue over scale. Through works such as Ali Banisadr’s exploration of transformation and Maryam Hoseini’s fragmented, shifting bodies, the exhibition highlighted change as both a formal and conceptual thread. Measured in scope and clear in direction, Art Basel Qatar 2026 introduced a distinct format that balances curatorial intent with the dynamics of a fair.

Cover and Slider Image: 

• artbasel.com