MENA Galleries at Frieze London

Frieze London is arguably one of the biggest annual art fairs of the year. Taking place every October in London’s Regents Park, both Frieze and Frieze Masters draw galleries, collectors and art enthusiasts from across the world. This year six galleries from the MENA region will have representation at the fair, so let’s take a look at what’s on display.

Tehran’s Dastan Gallery will be participating at Frieze for the fourth time with a presentation of works by Farah Ossouli, Soheila Sokhanvari, Reza Aramesh, Shahryar Hatami, Morteza Pourhosseini, and duo Maryam Ayeen & Abbas Shahsavar. The group presentation is centered on artists whose practices foreground the human body and who engage in narrative forms of figuration. The mixed works - of painting, sculpture, and mixed media - demonstrate how storytelling permeates across different mediums.

From Egypt, Gypsum’s booth will present a dual presentation of sculptural reliefs by Yasmine El Meleegy and hand-stitched tapestries by Marianne Fahmy. The Cairo-based gallery’s booth will address intertwined themes of labour and leisure through an exploration of the industrial and socio-political heritage of the port of Alexandria, and the nationalist representations they bred. El Meleegy’s wall sculptures revisit the legacy of industrialist and sculptor Fathy Mahmoud, reclaiming shards of his mass-produced porcelain and assembling them into new compositions. Her work reorients historical scripts through a process of shattering and assembling, while recasting functional dinnerware as an art object. Meanwhile, Fahmy’s tapestries are hand-embroidered on monk’s cloth. The works explore Egypt’s environmental and socio-political future, focusing on Alexandria’s rising sea levels and land subsidence risk rendering the city uninhabitable, forcing millions inland to satellite desert cities. In addition to her tapestries, Fahmy’s film - Laws of Ruins (2024) - has also been selected as part of the Frieze X ICA Film Programme.

Saudi Arabia’s Athr gallery will also be presenting a booth focusing on female Saudi artists through the work of Daniah Alsaleh and Basmah Felemban. Together, their work traces the shifting terrain of Saudi Arabia and a landscape continuously reshaped by ecology, stories, and the movement of people. Alsaleh’s work draws on research of AlUla, the ancient Nabatean city. Her A Stone’s Palette series grinds carnelian - the mineral once carried along pilgrimage and trade routes - to paint contemporary views of the city. She will also present a multi-media installation called Hinat, reviving the memory of a Nabatean woman whose tomb carries one of the region’s few inscriptions naming a woman. Meanwhile, Felemban’s The Fable of Crossing the River by Feeling the Pebbles she treats the landscape as an evolving system of data, language, and ecology. Her work tells the story of the Jirry Tribe of catfish that roam the valleys of the world ; surveying, mining lost data, and redrawing maps by reading sediments. The fable speaks of a vanished artifact ; a monument said to exist in Wadi Rum in AlUla that documented the Jirry’s methodology. What remains are fragments the artist presents as proof of its existence, said to have journeyed across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and finally the Arabian Peninsula.

The MENA country with the biggest representation at Frieze this year is Lebanon, with Marfa presenting at Frieze and Sfeir Semler having a booth at Frieze Masters. Beirut’s Marfa Projects will be presenting the work of Lebanese artist Omar Fakhoury, who will be exhibiting his latest project Tough Wood for the first time at a fair. The body of work - which was first exhibited in Beirut in 2024 - is an exploration through painting of a burning desire to revisit childhood’s forest. In addition, he will also present some works from the The Forest and Touch Wood series, exploring myths, folklore, and religious beliefs in a series of small-scale acrylic on linen paintings and sculptures.

Sfeir Semler meanwhile, will be present as part of Frieze Masters, Frieze London’s sister fair that gives a unique view on the relationship between old and new art. Everything exhibited in Frieze Masters must have been made before the year 2000. The fair also takes place in Regent's Park, but in a separate marquee. Sfeir Semler’s booth will present work by Samia Halaby in a presentation called “Studio.” “History has made abstract painting the path through which the language of pictures will grow”, says Halaby, “The task of pictures is to hold the content of their time that cannot be described in other forms; the challenge I have accepted is that of developing the formal language of pictures in ways that will allow them to hold new, contemporary content.” The booth will focus on abstract works created by Halaby throughout her career.

In addition to Sfeir Semler, Lawrie Shabibi will be presenting a booth of work at Frieze Masters by the late Mona Saudi (1945-2022). The Frieze Masters booth will showcase six sculptures from across Saudi’s career addressing themes of fertility, growth, and love. In addition, Lawrie Shabibi will also present 11 rarely seen works on paper produced between 1973 and 1978, which had not been exhibited publicly until in 2023, one year after her death. Created during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War, the drawings reflect Saudi’s precise technique and emotional register, functioning as a visual diary, documenting personal and historical memory. They also provide important context for the conceptual underpinnings of her sculptural work.

Frieze London and Frieze Masters will take place in London’s Regent’s Park between 15 and 19 October 2025