A. B.:<\/strong> Dubai is certainly one of the best places to live in our complex, contradiction-riven world: it is a highly tolerant, multinational, dynamic city where setting up and running a business is straightforward, and it is well connected, both logistically and culturally, to every major commercial and cultural centre. All of this is essential for any art venture. For me, though, the key factor is that in Dubai the appetite for cultural projects is growing exponentially, even despite the high density of art initiatives across the UAE as a whole \u2014 the museums in Abu Dhabi, the important contemporary art biennial in Sharjah. Yet Dubai, although at the epicentre, is not about large institutions; it is about galleries and private art initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.:<\/strong> For almost 20 years I lived in Switzerland, working with our family art collection and promoting Russian artists internationally. We staged several of their exhibitions in Swiss galleries and organised residencies in France. I had an idea and was already preparing to bring it to life \u2014 to create open studios. I had even found a space. But four years ago the project had to be wound up, as it was becoming ever harder to realise. Some time later, my husband and I decided to move to Dubai. The city welcomed us very warmly, and the relocation and settling-in process were easy for the whole family. Despite the move, the idea of promoting Russian art remained important to me. And Dubai, having become a global business hub, is of course an excellent place for it.<\/p>\n\n\n Having settled in Dubai, you began to immerse yourself in the local art scene and explore it. What did you find most striking here?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.: <\/strong>There really is plenty to delve into here: the East has an extraordinarily rich and fascinating palette of cultures, a great many diverse diasporas coexist side by side, and each has something to say. In fact, it was while exploring the local art scene that we met Alisa, who had been organising exhibitions of contemporary Russian art here and launched an entire community built around lectures and trips to fairs, museums and galleries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, I was already familiar with the art market in the UAE to some extent before moving to Dubai. I remember my first art fair in Abu Dhabi, which made a great impression on me. I was struck by the exceptionally high calibre of specialists who had gathered there from all over the world. The gallery owners I invited from Geneva were not particularly enthusiastic at first, but within a couple of years the situation had changed, and turning towards the region became an established trend. Important Christie\u2019s and Sotheby\u2019s auctions are held here, and neighbouring Qatar hosted the first Art Basel fair. In other words, it is now abundantly clear that Dubai really is a significant hub, both as a meeting point for major events and in terms of international logistics. At the same time, it remains authentic and highly distinctive.<\/p>\n\n\n A. B.:<\/strong> Upon arriving in Dubai, I immediately began working within and with the context. My first significant immersion as a viewer was a tour led by Pablo del Valle, the artistic director of Art Dubai. He instantly focused my eye on the key works, on the galleries doing complex intellectual work, and on the concepts that are relevant both to the region and globally. Pablo deftly stripped away the bright decorative surface layer to reveal the depth of the processes unfolding in the region \u2014 processes of worldwide significance. Afterwards, it was easy for me both to learn more about the local context myself and to draw others into it \u2014 artists and viewers alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is worth remembering that this was a time when the number of our compatriots in Dubai was growing rapidly. And I won\u2019t deny that many of them felt rootless, gripped by a sense of existential loneliness. Yet it turned out that these were not problems we alone faced: melancholy and detachment from home are experienced by many of the diasporas living in Dubai. The conceptual projects we see here speak to issues that matter deeply to the regions, and if you pay close attention to the artistic landscape and its themes, it becomes clear that we are part of it. There is room here for us, for our experiences, for our art and for dialogue. I was inspired: I staged my first exhibition at the Foundry art centre with Russian artists, then a second at Bayt AlMamzar. It was at the third that Anna and I met. She had an idea, and I had several proposals of my own. That is how we began discussing a joint venture.<\/p>\n\n\n The Russian word \u201cdacha\u201d has already entered global usage as la datcha. You have opened dom in Dubai. Moreover, in Arabic our word \u201cdom\u201d sounds like \u201calways\u201d. Such a play on words and meanings in the name naturally sets a particular scale for this new institution.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A. B.:<\/strong> To be honest, I had originally planned to continue my curatorial and gallery work in Dubai, developing my own gallery, Alisa. But meeting Anna turned everything in a different direction and on an entirely different scale, encompassing not only exhibitions but also a lecture programme, workshops and a bookshop. Besides, it is clear that we have reached a point in the development of contemporary Russian art where supporting and promoting it requires more than just galleries; other forms of support are needed too \u2014 academic, exhibition-based and educational. Especially if we are talking about engaging with the international process. What is required are institutions capable of presenting it properly, building professional connections and organising production outside Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.:<\/strong> As soon as I arrived in Dubai, I wanted to continue my projects and initiatives supporting artists on a larger scale. Helping Russian artists was the priority \u2014 it was this mission that brought Alisa and me together. She envisaged our future project as a gallery, whereas I was very actively trying to draw her over to the institutional level, all the more so since Alisa\u2019s experience with art residencies is directly connected to it.<\/p>\n\n\n How much time passed from the initial discussions to the opening? I\u2019ve heard it took literally a couple of months. And such a move is, perhaps, very Russian.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.:<\/strong> We opened roughly a year after we first met. The ideas came far more quickly than we could bring them to life. As soon as we secured a space in the right location \u2014 something we had been pursuing for a very long time \u2014 everything moved quite fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. B.:<\/strong> We opened next door to the Alserkal art cluster, which is modelled on Moscow\u2019s Winzavod. There are some very good international galleries here and a great crowd, so we decided straight away to open Dom Art Projects in this spot. We waited quite a while for the space, but we were preparing all that time: by the moment our lease was approved, we already had the concept, the fit-out plan, the contractors and everything else ready. And we really did open a couple of months later \u2014 in November 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n What was the final concept for the project in the end? And who did you open with?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A. B.:<\/strong> We opened with an installation by the Japanese artist Michiko Tsuda, \u2018You Would Come Back There to Meet Me Tomorrow\u2019, and a piece by the technology artist Dmitry Morozov (::vtol::). The composer and pianist Pyotr Aidu performed Steve Reich\u2019s Piano Phase, while Elena Kovylina presented a new interpretation of her renowned endurance performance \u2018Caryatid\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.:<\/strong> Dom Art Projects is a full-cycle art production space \u2014 from the ideas nurtured by our bookshop and lecture programme to production and presentation. We invest a great deal of effort in building and attracting a multinational, multicultural community. Professionals have taken notice too: our artists take part in conferences and exhibitions, we have been invited to participate in Art Dubai, and the press writes about us favourably. And we are grateful to have been accepted so easily, quickly and warmly.<\/p>\n\n\n Your first resident was the Moscow artist Pyotr Kiryusha. What pool of artists do you plan to work with going forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.:<\/strong> With a wide variety of authors, including, of course, Russian ones. There are three studios in our space; the artists work side by side and interact with one another. Throughout the day, anyone who wishes can drop in to talk to them and watch them at work. We involve our residents in masterclasses for children and adults. And with Pyotr, incidentally, it happened quite naturally when he was in residence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. B.:<\/strong> We will be working with, among others, a number of artists I was connected with through my Moscow gallery Alisa, which was first and foremost a curatorial project. They include Kirill Mikhailin, Sofya Skidan and Kirill Makarov, who works in painting and digital art. We are looking forward to his exhibition. At the moment, the Malaysian artist Shamin Sharum is in residence. There are plans to stage large group non-commercial exhibitions that will change two or three times a year. One such show is currently being prepared by curator Alexander Burenkov, who took part in the residency in Abu Dhabi and proposed to us the idea of vegetative time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. P.:<\/strong> Next season we are planning an exhibition of works from my personal collection, in which I have focused on geometric abstraction by post-war Russian artists. We are also working with other collections to assemble worthy exhibitions drawn from various holdings. We give priority to those exhibitions and curatorial ideas that create a dialogue between artists from different countries, periods and cultural landscapes who are nonetheless connected by an invisible thread. We would like to reveal it, to highlight the less obvious rhymes and connections, and to demonstrate that, regardless of where we come from, we have much in common. And the artistic space is best suited to such intercultural dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How can artists apply for your residencies?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A. B.:<\/strong> There are three ways. The first is by curatorial invitation. We have a long list, we work around the artist\u2019s schedule, they receive an invitation and come over. The second option is an open call, which we plan to launch once the geopolitical situation in the Middle East stabilises. Here we can set out the conditions \u2014 for example, the theme, technique or region \u2014 and announce to the world that we are ready to accept applications. It is an excellent tool for discovering artists we do not yet know. And the third is a residency within the framework of an institutional partnership. This is when another organisation approaches us wanting to realise an art project but lacks its own capacity or resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alisa Bagdonait\u0117 and Anna Pumpianskaya on Dom Art Projects in Dubai and supporting contemporary Russian art on the global art scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-55"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/watchrussia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/berezhnoy.me-2943-1024x682.jpg\")
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