Curatorial Ethos
The space prioritizes community, collaboration, and artistic development through practice, allowing artists to bring their own ideas rather than operating under traditional curation. Its programme focuses on supporting creators through the process of realizing and testing their work, facilitating learning through doing and refining through experience.
An independent alternative art space on the Dubai Water Canal in Business Bay, running a studio programme that places artists in proximity to each other and lets the work follow. The exhibition programme has brought together artists from Latin America, the Middle East and beyond — communities whose presence in Dubai is real but whose cultural production rarely gets institutional space. Workshops run in partnership with Dubai Culture. Open by appointment and for programme events.
Why this gallery matters
Exhibo editorial
Most art spaces in Dubai announce themselves loudly. 1604 does the opposite — a studio programme on an office floor in a Business Bay tower, no fanfare, a Gmail for contact. What it produces is disproportionate to how quietly it operates. In February 2025 the open studio yielded an exhibition of edible art, made by three artists who'd been sharing a floor and started making work together across unfamiliar mediums. In April the space presented nine Latin American artists examining what Latinidad looks like inside Southwest Asia — the specific experience of Latin migration to the Gulf, which exists and is almost entirely absent from the region's cultural conversation.
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Address
Office 1604, Blue Bay Tower, Business Bay
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