The Third Line celebrates twentieth anniversary and Dubai’s art success

The Third Line is currently presenting The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line, a project curated by Shumon Basar (Sept. 18 – Nov. 7). The exhibition marks the gallery’s 20th anniversary. Taking inspiration from the phrase often invoked in times of hardship — both as an endurance mantra and a fatalistic admission of reality — The Only Way Out Is Through looks back on two decades of The Third Line’s story in relation to global cultural, political, and economic shifts through a retrospective exhibition, a programme of conversations, and “Flash Sales Specials”, which is a series of 48-hour pop-up sales of thematically grouped, long-unseen works from the gallery’s archive.

The exhibition component features every artist currently represented by The Third Line, with early and recent works drawn from the gallery’s extensive two-decade archive, much of which has not been shown to the public.

Many of the early works reveal how some artists’ practices have evolved over the years, while others show artists whose visual language and concerns had matured and have remained strikingly consistent. Selected pieces are arranged into four chronological sections — 2005 to 2009/ 2010 to 2015/ 2016 to 2020/ and 2021to 2025 — each contextualised by a timeline running across the gallery’s floors that delineates key political, economic, and cultural moments, ranging from the global financial crisis, through uprisings across the Arab world and the COVID-19 pandemic, to the present moment characterised by interlocked global crises.

The exhibition opens and closes with statistical analytics that frame the narrative arc of the past two decades. The 20-year portrait of The Third Line is completed by a series of conversations with key protagonists from the gallery’s history. In celebrating the gallery’s 20-year journey, a tradition from its earlier years is resurrected, as Flash Sales Specials. Basar selects long-unseen works from the gallery’s archive, groups them by “Search Word” themes, and displays them in the gallery’s Viewing Room for 48 hours only at a time, rather like vanishing Instagram Stories. The Flash Sales Specials are being announced via The Third Line’s social media platforms over the course of the exhibition.

Al Quoz Dubai by Hassan Hajjaj.

The Third Line was founded when contemporary art from the Middle East was yet to gain recognition internationally, the way it has today. Dubai was also just beginning to assert itself as a centre for culture and commerce. In 2005, the city’s ambitions were often met with international skepticism. Twenty years on, however, Dubai has become a cultural and artistic hub that focuses on and shapes post-western cultural discourse. Artists included in The Only Way Out Is Through are Abbas Akhavan, Ala Ebtekar, Amir H. Fallah, Anuar Khalifi, Arwa Abouon, Bady Dalloul, Farah Al Qasimi, Farhad Moshiri, Fouad Elkoury, Hassan Hajjaj, Hayv Kahraman, Huda Lutfi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Jordan Nassar, Kamran Samimi, Laleh Khorramian, Lamya Gargash, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nima Nabavi, Pouran Jinchi, Rana Begum, Sahand Hesamiyan, Sara Naim, Sarah Awad, Shirin Aliabadi, Slavs and Tatars, Sophia Al-Maria, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Vian Sora, yasiin bey and Youssef Nabil. Basar is a writer, thinker and curator, with two decades’ experience working in the Gulf. After landing in Dubai for the first time in 2005, he became a Contributing Editor at Bidoun magazine, with whom the book, With/Without: Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East, co-edited with Antonia Carver and Markus Miessen, was published in 2007.

In the same year, his other book, Cities from Zero, also came out, analysing new urban languages in Dubai and China. Basar has been Commissioner at Art Dubai’s renowned Global Art Forum since 2011, overseeing hundreds of speakers, across Doha, Kuwait, Singapore and London. He was Curator-at-Large at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, where his 2021 exhibition with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist Age of You was critically acclaimed. Other roles have included founding member of Fondazione Prada’s Thought Council; special projects at Prada and Miu Miu; Curator of Public Program at Art Week Riyadh 2025; Expert Advisory Group for the Royal Commission of AlUla; Chief Narrative Officer and co-founder at web3 startup Zien; and Public Programs Director at the Architectural Association. He is currently working on establishing Ibraaz, a London-located space for art, culture and ideas from the global majority, initiated by Lina Lazaar and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation.

Shirin Aliabadi's photography work Girls In Car 4.

“In online parlance,” says Basar, “the phrase “the only way out is through” has gained mythical meme status. On the one hand, the saying is called upon in times of hardship, such as aching grief, or impossible adversity. Equally, it is a fatalist admission of real-world facts, sisters with that other ubiquitous piece of self-consoling: “it is what it is”. In the context of The Third Line’s two-decade long life, The Only Way Out Is Through is an invitation to time travel to multiple, mythic beginnings, and chart the gallery’s history in parallel with the histories of Dubai, the UAE, its neighbouring regions, and the world as a whole.

“These 20 years measure the distance from a time when “art from or about the Middle East” had yet to fully reach major museums and auction rooms, the way it has today. Equally, Dubai in 2005, was a frenetic “start-up city”, constructed from reason-defying promises about its future. At the time, these plans were met with derision from established cultural and economic centres. Twenty years on, Dubai has now proven itself a new premier league city redefining where “the centre” of the 21st century actually is. And what it feels like.”