In a city where residents from around the world share the same streets, public spaces and daily routines, art can offer an unexpected way of bringing people together.
That idea is central to the second Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, which begins in Al Ain on October 23 before expanding to the capital on November 15.
The exhibition, called Home: A Glossary for a Communal Sense of Place, brings together 21 Emirati and international artists whose installations will occupy public spaces until February 15.
“The question that I have always pursued is the idea of what makes us come together,” artistic director Elvira Dyangani Ose tells The National. “What does it mean to be together?”
Ose, who also serves as artistic director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, has spent much of her career examining the histories represented in cultural institutions and how audiences engage with them. Her previous roles include director of Barcelona's Museu d'Art Contemporani and curator of international art at Tate Modern.
Working across Abu Dhabi's public spaces, however, presents a different challenge. In a museum, visitors generally arrive intending to encounter art. Outside, people might come across an installation while shopping, walking or going about their daily routines.
“You have to bring together a proposition that takes the public into account, a public that doesn't necessarily think of themselves as an audience,” Ose says.
She believes this gives artists and curators greater responsibility. Their works enter spaces that communities already use, often without considering them places for artistic encounters. Abu Dhabi's diverse population makes the question of to whom public art should speak particularly interesting.
The exhibition's theme emerged from Ose's longstanding interest in the relationships that bring people together, whether within families, communities or societies.
“A place is a physical structure we share, but the sense of our own place, the sense of home, the condition of home, is something that goes beyond the structure,” she says. “It's something more personal.”
Rather than offering a fixed definition of home, the biennial explores how people develop attachments to places through experiences, memories and shared histories.
Ose's earlier visits to the UAE helped shape her approach. Having attended Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennial, she was struck by the distinct identities of the emirates and the ways their material cultures influence their development.
Abu Dhabi's cultural ambitions were another attraction. With Louvre Abu Dhabi established, Zayed National Museum open and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi approaching completion, Ose encountered a city increasingly expressing its ambitions through cultural institutions.
“There is an incredible imaginary to be built,” she says.
She thinks Abu Dhabi's changing urban landscape offers possibilities that older cities do not necessarily have. In many European and American cities, monuments and statues preserve particular historical narratives, influencing how public spaces are understood and what changes can be imagined.
Abu Dhabi, by comparison, offers opportunities to consider how those spaces might develop and what meanings future generations will attach to them.
Few areas illustrate this more clearly than Mina Zayed, where several biennial installations will be placed.
The district has continued to change throughout the exhibition's development, a trend Ose sees as an opportunity to engage with the city's evolving identity.
The area's maritime history also provides material for artists to explore.
Emirati artist Khalid Al Banna is developing a tribute to fishing nets and the practices of the communities that have used them. American artist Nari Ward also works with fishing nets, although his approach considers memory, movement and the trajectories connecting different lives.
Ward's work will be presented in a boatyard in Mina Zayed, where the remnants of fishing vessels connect the installation to the area's history.
These relationships between artworks and locations are central to Ose's approach.
“We didn't want anything that felt artificial,” she says. “That engagement with the material culture has to be real and vivid.”
The aim is to engage with histories and practices already embedded in the landscape while allowing artists to interpret them through their own perspectives.
In Al Ain, Asuncion Molinos Gordo draws on her research into the UAE's traditional aflaj irrigation systems and the ways they have influenced the landscape.
Other works explore aspects of the emirate that residents may rarely encounter. French artist Laure Prouvost is presenting an octopus-themed installation, while Argentinian artist Mercedes Azpilicueta is drawing inspiration from the coral life beneath Abu Dhabi's waters.
Together, these projects consider the relationship between the places people inhabit and the natural environments, traditions and histories that contribute to their character.
The exhibition also features artists including Ibrahim Mahama, Yinka Shonibare, Akram Zaatari, Kapwani Kiwanga, Marinella Senatore and Reena Saini Kallat.
Although smaller than the inaugural edition, which ran from November 2024 to April 2025 and featured more than 50 projects, the second biennial, Ose says, will place greater emphasis on monumental works, interaction with communities and varied experiences.
Sites include MiZa and Souq Al Mina in Mina Zayed, Saadiyat Cultural District, Hidd Al Saadiyat and locations across Al Ain. A public programme will provide opportunities for visitors to engage with the artworks through conversations and other activities.
The biennial also builds on the first edition's legacy, which saw several installations acquired or retained as permanent public artworks.
Ose says some works in the new exhibition are intended to remain in the city, while others have been conceived as temporary experiences.
The distinction matters because an artwork can serve different purposes depending on its location and intended lifespan. Some might preserve a particular history, while others invite people to experience familiar surroundings in an unfamiliar way.
Ose is especially interested in the emotional connections that art can create, sometimes through experiences seemingly removed from their immediate surroundings.
She describes the possibility of an artwork allowing people to listen to birds from different parts of the world, including species that may no longer exist. Such encounters, she thinks, can take visitors somewhere unexpected while remaining grounded in the physical environment where they occur.
“I like the idea that yes, there are things that have to be related to the place, but you also want art to take you far away from your everyday,” she says.
Ultimately, Ose hopes the biennial can interrupt familiar routines and offer moments of discovery, taking people towards “something magical, something new, something that made them think differently”.
Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial opens in Al Ain on October 23 and in Abu Dhabi on November 15. It runs until February 15, 2027.