When someone asks us about home, we might name the city we live in, or an address we left years ago. We might think of a room that no longer exists, or people who make a temporary place feel familiar. The answer seems simple until we try to choose a single home from all the places that have left their mark on us.
MENART Fair places this uncertainty at the heart of its seventh edition, opening to the public from 23 to 25 October 2026 at Galerie Joseph, 116 Rue de Turenne, Paris, following a preview for institutions and collectors on 22 October. Under the theme “Where Is Home?”, the fair brings together galleries from the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas, opening the question to memory, language, the body and land.
Image: Courtesy of MENART FAIR
Asking it in Paris adds another layer. On the same dates, Art Basel Paris takes place at the Grand Palais, bringing together 211 exhibitors from 41 countries and territories. Amid this international presence, a fair dedicated to a particular region needs to articulate what it contributes: which works does it allow us to discover? And what context gives them the time and space to be understood?
Ahmad Tallaa: Place Within the Painted Surface
Dubai’s Firetti Contemporary presents What Remains, a solo presentation by Syrian artist Ahmad Tallaa. It begins with the possibility of carrying home with us—in the body, memory and material—after leaving the place itself.
Images: Courtesy of MENART FAIR
Working across painting, sculpture, artist books and works on paper, Tallaa returns to the human face as a witness to experience. He builds his surfaces using sand, chalk powder, pigments, glue and acrylic. The sand is collected in the UAE, where he lives and works, bringing the material of his current surroundings into works that bear traces of earlier experiences.
These details give the question of home a tangible texture. The combination of sand, layers and faces taking shape and being erased can be read as a way of thinking about belonging that accumulates as we move. The new place physically enters the work, while earlier places endure through their effect on the artist.
Amor Ghedamsi: Worlds That Live Within Us
Tunisian gallery Archivart presents works by Amor Ghedamsi, including Tilka akwan taskunuk (These Are Worlds That Live Within You), a mixed-media work on canvas from 2025. Works announced by the fair also include Shajarat al-matāhah (The Labyrinth Tree) and Le voyage (The Journey), made with mixed media on carved wood.
Images: Courtesy of MENART FAIR
These titles offer a way into the presentation: what happens when a person becomes the place that worlds inhabit? Tilka akwan taskunuk shifts the question from finding somewhere to settle towards considering what settles within us. Between the tree, the labyrinth and the journey, home can be understood as a relationship formed over time, in which roots and movement intertwine.
According to the gallery’s announcement, Archivart’s first participation in the fair brings together Ghedamsi from Tunisia and Fakhri Guedafi from Libya, expanding the Maghreb’s presence within this edition.
Ashraf El Zamzami: Space for an Inner Life
From Cairo, Safarkhan Art Gallery presents works by Ashraf El Zamzami. Announced paintings include Rêverie, Le Gardien and La Paire Bleue, all oils from 2025.
Images: Courtesy of MENART FAIR
El Zamzami’s titles open a different door within the fair’s theme: towards dreaming, guardianship and the relationship between two figures. These ideas allow an approach to inner life, safety and companionship, while leaving the paintings open to the viewer’s interpretation.
This space feels necessary in a regional fair centred on home. Artists should have room to explore intimacy, imagination and everyday life, and for their work to be read beyond the expectation of a story about war or exile behind every image.
Ilgaz Gürün: Home in the Details That Remain
Istanbul’s EVİN gallery presents works by Ilgaz Gürün, including Untitled, Remnants 5/8 and Remnants 7/8, all from 2025. In Untitled, yellow and blue bulbs hang among tree branches above an empty pavement, while an opening in a low wall leads into dark greenery. The light lends the setting familiarity, while the absence of people leaves its story unresolved.
Images: Courtesy of MENART FAIR
In Remnants 5/8, a red sofa with an ornate gold frame occupies the foreground, beneath a small portrait on a striped wall. In Remnants 7/8, an oval mirror frames a figure in profile and a bright window, with a vase standing before it. Shades of violet and blue recur, and the softened edges make these details feel as though they are reaching us through a memory that cannot quite be fixed.
I find in these works a way into home through what we remember of it: a piece of furniture, light from a window, a picture on the wall. Within MENART’s theme, Gürün’s paintings invite us to consider belonging through our relationship with these details: how they carry traces of people, and how their familiarity endures even when a place appears empty.
Why a Regional Fair During a Global Art Week?
These presentations reveal contrasting approaches to the same question: material moving between countries, inner worlds, a daydream and an architectural form. Their proximity gives the fair an opportunity to build a conversation that extends beyond gathering artists under a geographical label.
Image: Courtesy of MENART FAIR
This, in my view, is where MENART’s value during Art Basel Paris week may lie: in offering a more focused encounter with different artistic practices and environments, giving galleries room to explain their choices and audiences the opportunity to develop an understanding beyond a brief introduction to a new name.
Such focus also carries a responsibility. The Middle East and North Africa encompass distinct art histories, markets, languages and experiences, and any collective framework needs to keep those differences visible. The question of home also needs room for the life that continues within it: play, boredom, relationships and imagination, alongside loss and departure.
