Lebanon
New fair for Beirut
The new boutique event features dealers from the whole Menasa region of Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, each showing just one artwork
By Georgina Adam. Web only
Published online: 12 July 2010
Another new fair has been launched, taking place in Beirut, 13-14 July. Dubbed Menasart, it grouped 30 dealers in a pavilion of the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Centre on the Mediterranean waterfront. Menasart refers to the art which will be on show—drawn from the whole Menasa region of Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Each exhibitor presents just one artwork, and this year’s event is being seen as “testing the waters” for the project. Next year’s event is planned to run longer, from 13 to 16 July 2011. Among the exhibitors are Agial and Q Galleries of Beirut, Isabelle van den Eynde and Empty Quarter of Dubai, Berlin’s Caprice Horn and London’s Rose Issa Projects. The organiser is Laure d’Hauteville, previously project manager with the French fair organisation Art Paris, who also worked on the two Art Paris-Abu Dhabi fairs in 2007 and 2008.
“When I worked on the Abu Dhabi fair I felt that collectors were looking for works that weren’t necessarily on exhibitors’ stands: the event was mainly an extension of other contemporary art fairs, and so showed international artists. Manasart aims to reveal emerging artists from the region, and act as a springboard for them,” says D’Hauteville, who also previously created ARTSUD, a contemporary art fair in the Lebanese capital which ran from 1998 to 2005.
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