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Curatorial Ethos
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Marsam Mattar, founded by the Emirati artist Mattar Bin Lahej, holds the distinction of being the first artist-run gallery in the United Arab Emirates. Bin Lahej opened it as both an exhibition space and a working studio, conceived less as a commercial showroom than as a place to stay in contact with the public and to teach. Alongside showing his own painting, sculpture and calligraphy, the gallery runs a long-standing education programme — annual summer camps and workshops across the Emirates through which he has mentored thousands of students. It reflects his guiding conviction that art should reach "the people," not only the few who visit galleries and museums.
Why this gallery matters
Exhibo editorial
Mattar Bin Lahej founded Marsam Mattar in 2003, and from the start he built it as something more than a place to show finished work. It was conceived as a working studio joined to a programme of workshops, training and exhibitions — a space designed to bring local artists along, not just to display them. It became one of the country's early private art institutions, developmental in purpose from the very beginning. That orientation still defines it. The gallery has kept its focus on emerging Emirati talent rather than an international roster, and its education work — the summer camps and workshops Bin Lahej has run for years — remains central to how it operates. It reflects a conviction he states plainly: that he makes art for everyone, not only for the few who visit galleries. In a Dubai scene increasingly organised around fairs and collectors, Marsam Mattar holds to a different idea — a gallery built around an artist's practice and around the artists he set out to nurture.
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Address
487 Al Wasl Rd - Al Wasl - Dubai
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