Fann À Porter

Exhibo editorial

Fann À Porter is Arabic for "art to go" — a name that says something about the gallery's ambitions from the start. Founded in 2009 by architect and art collector Ghada Kunash, it operates out of The Workshop, a renovated villa in Jumeirah 2 that also houses a sustainable store, a design studio and a café. This is not the gallery as white cube. It is the gallery as neighbourhood institution — a place that happens to be on your way somewhere else, that you might stop into for a coffee and leave having discovered a Syrian painter whose work is now in the Barjeel Art Foundation and the Fonds d'Art Contemporain in Paris. The programme focuses on emerging artists from the Middle East — Ahmad Kasha, Khaled Jarada, Omran Younis, Abdelwahab Hawam — at a moment when that work is beginning to reach international collections. The gallery runs six to eight exhibitions a year, offers artist residencies, clear pricing and bespoke payment plans: a deliberately non-traditional model that positions collecting as something accessible rather than exclusive. The "Art For All Collective" and open calls for UAE-based artists reinforce a mission that is genuinely community-oriented. In Jumeirah, where most galleries operate out of converted villas serving a neighbourhood audience, Fann À Porter has built something with considerably more reach than its modest setting suggests.