The Seoul Museum of Art presents PROXIMITIES, an exhibition highlighting contemporary art from the United Arab Emirates.

"Proximity Worlds" presents over 40 artists spanning three generations, connected to the United Arab Emirates—a Gulf nation shaped by the intersection of migration, abundant natural resources, and rapid urban transformation over the past half-century since its founding. Created in collaboration with artists and curators, the three sections explore the phenomena that arise when the unstable and subjective worlds of the personal, social, and urban realms intersect. Spanning from the most personal and imaginary to the geopolitical and fundamental, the artists and curators question how relationships can exist within close proximity without collapsing into homogeneity.

In today's hyper-connected world, we exist in intimate relationships that transcend geographical boundaries. Amidst the immediacy and intimacy brought about by globalization, artists engage with inherited forms and circulating materials, exploring how concepts collide and converge through movement and translation between local specificity and international legibility. The three sections propose distinct modes of encounter and viewing. The artists, both artists and curators, were invited based on themes that resonate with their own practices. Curator Eunju Kim and curator Maya El-Khalil, who curated the exhibition, brought together fellow artists who explore their perspectives on the world. Each section connects surrounding works, forming a path that connects the artists' perspectives. These connections become productive gaps where different modes of cultural navigation emerge.

The first section, "Places of Rotation," centered around photographer Farah Al Qasimi, is a space where familiarity and unfamiliarity intersect. Everyday life unfolding behind walls creates simultaneous realities we cannot see. The power of imagination sustains the inner world and creates a sensory path through which we encounter the changing external world. The second section, "Documenting Distances, Not Topography," conceived by Mohamed Kazim and Christiana De Marchi, explores the changing order of space. Tools that inscribe power—maps, coordinates, boundaries, and compasses—are transformed here into unstable forms, schematizing alternative forms. Embracing this mutability, "It, Amphibian" is both a return to primal elements and an evolution toward hybridity. Ramin Haerizadeh, Lokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian (RRH) organize a collaborative work inspired by the Chinese character "回" (return), which means "square within a square." This collaboration evokes themes of return, inclusion, and the interplay between inside and outside. The artists become "amphibious beings," simultaneously living in two environments.

Each section proposes a different mode of encounter: imagining the everyday, thinking about constantly changing maps, and amphibious reciprocity. These three propositional positions operate not as separate categories but as a connected constellation, with the artists' thoughts flowing between them forming a path that connects these different approaches.

"Proximity World" is part of a meaningful collaboration between the Seoul Museum of Art and the Abu Dhabi Foundation for Music and Arts. The 2025 summer exhibition, "Proximity World," introduces Korean new media artists to Abu Dhabi.LayerThis is a reciprocal exchange program following "ed Medium: We Are in Open Circuits." This exchange seeks to expand the "proximity" between the two cultures, bridging cultural traditions and futures, regional specificities and global trends.