Dubai: Art Dubai, the Middle East’s largest annual contemporary art fair, has featured for the first time digital works, as the wealthy Gulf emirate seeks to position itself as a crypto-assets hub.
This year, in its 15th edition, the four-day fair is hosting more than 100 local and foreign art dealers, with an entire wing of 17 galleries and platforms dedicated to showcasing and selling NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
NFT sales platforms use the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies and transform anything from illustrations to memes into virtual collectors217; items that cannot be duplicated.
Benedetta Ghione, Art Dubai’s executive director, said NFTs, which burst into the mainstream last year and are now traded at major auction houses, have drawn a lot of attention in the United Arab Emirates, already a leisure and trading hub.
The increased interest, along with Dubai’s “unique position221; as “a growing crypto hub”, prompted fair organizers to dedicate a new digital section, she told AFP at the launch on Friday.
“We thought this was a perfect time, and the perfect place,” she said.
After signing an agreement in December with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Dubai — one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE — introduced last week a new virtual assets law and a regulatory authority to oversee the sector.
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