Biography
In 1992, Mona Hauser was living between New York and Florida, studying art, considering opening a gallery somewhere in Miami. She had never heard of Dubai. The following year her husband was invited to help establish the Godolphin Racing stable, and the family moved. They planned to stay three years. On arrival she asked to see the oldest part of the city. They took her to Bastakiya — wind-tower houses, coral-stone walls, alleyways near the Creek. "I could feel a special energy in this area," she has said. "I immediately knew I wanted my gallery here or in the desert." She waited ten years, raised two daughters, and in 2003 opened XVA. What she built matters beyond the building. XVA was among the first spaces in Dubai to treat contemporary art from the Arab world and Iran as a serious and sustained programme rather than a cultural amenity. She directed the Bastakiya Art Fair for several years when there was almost no infrastructure for that kind of event. She took XVA to Art Basel Hong Kong when the region had little international visibility. Artists she showed early are now in the Met and the British Museum. She did this from a wind-tower house in a neighbourhood most of Dubai had forgotten, without institutional backing, before the art market here existed in any recognisable form. The staff called it the Monasphere. She attributed the atmosphere to the house. Both were probably right.