The Power of Softness
MENART is more than an art fair, it’s a heartbeat. Every edition transforms Paris into a meeting point where the voices of the Middle East and North Africa claim their rightful place in the global conversation. What began as a discreet platform has grown into a bold statement: the region’s artistic energy is not only alive but shaping the future of contemporary culture.
At once intimate and international, MENART creates a dialogue between heritage and experimentation, memory and innovation. It offers a rare glimpse into the artistic landscapes of a region too often misunderstood, revealing a mosaic of stories that are as complex as they are universal. To step into MENART is to step into the pulse of MENA creativity that is urgent, poetic, and defiantly original.
Galleries to Watch at MENART 2025
Le Violon Bleu Gallery (Tunisia) pays tribute to pioneering women who shaped North Africa’s cultural imagination, from Baya and Chaibia Talal to Najia Mehadji.
George Kamel Gallery (Syria) foregrounds narrative and symbolism through the works of Bassem Dahdouh, Rula Abu Saleh, and Lutfi Romhein.
Art Vision Gallery (Damascus) presents a solo by Fadi Yazigi, whose figurative practice captures the depth of human intimacy.
Quartum Galleri (Norway) brings together voices of exile and transformation—Hammoud Chantout, Modar Dawara, Oroubah Dieb, and more.
Camille Pouyfaucon Gallery (Paris) showcases Sarine Semerjian, whose multidisciplinary work channels her Armenian-Syrian-Lebanese heritage into movement and memory.
Yvonne Hohner Contemporary (Germany) presents The Power of Gentleness, a collective meditation on resilience and tenderness.
Zawyeh Gallery (Palestine) continues its mission with Sliman Mansour, Nabil Anani, Maisara Baroud, and Mohammed Joha—figures central to Palestinian visual identity.
Galerie Patrice Trigano (Paris) spans movements from Surrealism to abstraction, presenting Halim Al Karim, Tahar Ben Jelloun, and Meriem Bouderbala.
Al Riwaq (Bahrain) features Noor Alwan, whose practice blends communal memory with playful spatial storytelling.
Why MENART Matters?
The Arab world isn’t one singular story: it is many small worlds, each rich with its own particularities.
MENART attempts to hold that multiplicity, presenting artists whose practices are at once deeply personal and powerfully political. From the Levant to North Africa, their work reimagines memory, identity, displacement, and resistance, not as static documentation but as living narratives.
Here, tenderness is not weakness but a hidden force. Softness marks, softness resists. Before the archive, there was poetry. Before the label, there was the look, the gesture, the story. At MENART, these stories collide and converse, offering new mirrors of the present moment. Even queerness — so often buried, renamed, or misread — emerges here not as novelty, but as continuity, as something that never left.
MENART 2025 also affirms its commitment to parity, featuring an equal representation of male and female artists. This balance creates space for multiple ways of seeing, insisting that the MENA art scene cannot be reduced to one voice, one gender, one narrative.
This year’s theme leans into the power of gentleness, a quiet strength that invites us to listen more closely. Is softness vulnerability, or is it the sharpest tool of resilience? The fair does not answer but lets the art speak, its whispers shaping futures, its tenderness refusing to be ignored.
Practical Information:
Galerie Joseph, 116 rue de Turenne, Paris 3e
October 24–27, 2025
Tickets €12, free for under 26
For more info about MENART, click here.
Buy your ticket for MENART here.
