Throughout its storied history as a gallery that has been active in the Middle East for nearly four decades, Green Art Gallery has had the privilege of bearing witness to the tremendous transformations that the regional art scene has seen. In its earliest iteration as Ornina in 1987, the gallery functioned as an exhibition space above a small bookstore in Homs, Syria that was an important gathering space for intellectuals, critics, and artists of the time. In 1995 in Dubai, Green Art opened in a small Jumeirah villa as an intimate salon d’art that continued its dedication to Arab Modernism while still emphasising the critical discourse that shaped its earlier days. Exhibitions in these nascent days included artists who would later become today’s modern Arab masters, including Fateh Moudarres, Dia Azzawi, Paul Guiragossian, and Ismail Fattah.  

Now in its second generation and newest form, Green Art Gallery relaunched in 2010 as a contemporary art space. Its program features artists working across diverse media, whose practices are rigorously researched, idea-led, and representative of our current moment. The gallery now represents a multi-generational mix of artists from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and beyond, including Turkish artists Hale Tenger and Hera Büyüktaşcıyan; Iranian artists Kamrooz Aram and Nazgol Ansarinia; and Shadi Habib Allah, Seher Shah, and Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck, who are Palestinian, Pakistani and Venezuelan respectively. In this geographic mix, the gallery reflects Dubai’s position as a cosmopolitan—as well as artistic—entrepôt, even as it boasts of a strong parallel Arab Modernist program.

In 2012, Green Art Gallery initiated a series of collaborations, working with external artists, writers, and emergent curators and extended the reach of its program beyond the confines of the white cube. In this way, the gallery affirms its commitment to documenting, archiving and historicising—in addition to direct support—of artistic production in the region. In particular, the gallery looks to extend its legacy of discursive and programmatic criticality to the written word with its publishing program.

Since 2012, Green Art Gallery has participated in various international and regional art fairs including Art Basel, FIAC, Frieze, Independent Brussels, The Armory Show, Liste, miart, Art Dubai and Artissima, among others . Its artists have shown at institutions and biennials including Artpace, CCA Wattis, Gwangju Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Manifesta, MAXXI, New Museum Triennial, Palais de Tokyo, São Paulo Biennial, SALT, Seoul Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Whitechapel and Venice Biennale.  Collecting institutions include the British Museum, Devi Art Foundation, LACMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Queensland Art Gallery, Kadist Art Foundation, M+ Hong Kong, and the Tate Modern.