Building the Platform: Sunny Rahbar and The Third Line's Defense of Middle Eastern Art
Sunny
Rahbar
In the early 2000s, Dubai's contemporary art scene was not a given. It was a possibility waiting for a catalyst. Sunny Rahbar became that catalyst.
Of Iranian origin and raised in Dubai, her journey was a global art world apprenticeship: Parsons School of Design, the Guggenheim Museum, Sotheby's London, and the launch of a New York gallery. But her true calling was not in the established art capitals. It was back home. She returned to Dubai with a determined goal: to build a concrete foundation for the region's emerging artistic voices.
In 2005, this vision materialised as The Third Line, the gallery she co-founded to create an internationally recognised platform for artists relevant to the Middle East. Twenty years later, the ecosystem she helped build has changed what contemporary art looks like globally. Before it, seeing an Arabic name on a Western gallery's roster was unusual. Now, as Rahbar says simply: "Now it's so normal."
I have always been inspired by individuals who have stood up in the face of adversity, to push through against all odds. I chose to defend the artists that I work with, to defend their work, and to stand beside them. I do believe it takes courage to devote your life to your art.
Arguably the first time a video installation was presented in a commercial gallery context in the region, challenging traditional notions of what art could be in that space. A boundary demolished quietly and permanently.
A faux gold-leaf replica of Dubai's coastline applied directly to the gallery wall. Pieces of the wall were sold as property, with prices inflating as the "land" was bought. A timely, incisive critique of the city's real estate frenzy that could only have emerged from its specific context.
His iconic knife-wall piece spelling "Shukran" (Thank You) in Arabic demonstrated the power of a single, monumental installation to captivate and converse, setting the tone for the gallery's philosophy: one work, fully committed, can be enough.
Looking back at The Third Line's founding in 2005, how did the initial vision take shape in a cultural landscape still finding its footing?
When we started The Third Line, the art landscape in the region was very different. There were very few spaces for contemporary artists from the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond to be seen and taken seriously on an international level. Our vision was to create a platform that not only supported artists locally but also gave them visibility globally. We wanted to build a bridge between the region and the wider art world, and to show that artists from here could be part of an international conversation while still speaking from their own contexts.
"We were working with building blocks and a lot of mistakes taught us some lifelong lessons. But most of all, the challenges allowed us to push for multifarious solutions that perhaps are not standard at all for a young commercial set up anywhere."
You were one of the first people to put Dubai on the map for the art world. What were some of the big challenges?
We started without there being any reference and framework of a similar model in the UAE. We had to start by building an audience and awareness, before anything. We weren't programming to sell like a shop. While the selling was a necessary aspect to sustain The Third Line, we wanted to build something much bigger than that. We wanted to present that platform where the makers and the audience could converge, converse, and connect.
Once The Third Line had some footing, we started getting involved in fairs and biennales and that allowed us to take Dubai and the UAE to the world. It came with a lot of its own challenges, and most of the initial years were spent battling stereotypes. But then we knew what we were getting into, and it wasn't a traditional model ever to begin with. It's been a lot of hard work, and we still face new challenges every day, but we've definitely come a long way since the initial days, and we've enjoyed every step of the way.
On building community before there was one.
There was an art community in Dubai. The Third Line was an extension of what I was doing before, which involved a community of creatives and people who had just come back to the UAE and who were excited to do things that were not happening here, such as hosting exhibitions or club nights or bringing out important DJs. It was just that there was very little. And that's why when we first started, we did a lot of events that were not just art exhibitions. We hosted talks. We screened films. There was a lack of places to go and watch films that were not blockbusters. We used the place as a meeting point, and it became a place where people could come and speak to each other and feel connected through the art or the conversation.
I suppose the first reason for the community was that we felt that there was underrepresentation in the Middle East and North Africa. Bidoun magazine was probably the first attempt to put all these people who do exist in one place. I guess the first step was saying: "No, we do have artists, and we don't have to shy away from that."
"Many of them didn't have galleries. We became the gallery that represented artists who didn't have representation. And then they grew. Some went on to do great work in the world and to be shown in all these Western institutions."
How have the gallery's curatorial choices responded to the shifting political and cultural climate over the years?
We've always believed that art reflects its time. The artists we work with are deeply engaged with the social, political, and cultural realities around them, and as a gallery, we've tried to give space for those voices to come through authentically. Whether it's moments of upheaval, transformation, or celebration, our program has always been responsive to what our artists are exploring and in turn, what audiences are grappling with.
What is your measure of success with an exhibition?
I think any reaction is a good reaction, and the worst is indifference. Then I feel something has failed, either in the work or in the viewer. But even failure, in my view, is always a good starting point.
How does the art market respond in times like these?
The market tends to become more cautious, but not necessarily inactive. Collectors ask more questions and prioritise works that feel meaningful or enduring. Artists continue to make work, and it's important that we support this creative act in the face of so much violence in the world.
Pioneering Iranian artist. Mirror mosaics and geometric abstraction.
Moroccan-British artist. The Andy Warhol of Marrakech.
Egyptian photographer. Hand-coloured images of cinema, memory, and desire.
Emirati photographer. Domestic spaces and the politics of the interior.
Iraqi-Swedish painter. Female figures navigating trauma, pleasure, and cultural collision.
Art collective. The area between the former Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.
Canadian-Iranian artist. The Dubai coastline sold as property.
Egyptian artist. Found objects, popular culture, and feminist politics.
There was no Art Dubai. Alserkal Avenue did not yet exist as an arts district. Going to an art fair and seeing a gallery or artist from the Arab world was unusual. The ecosystem that the world now takes for granted had not been built. Rahbar and her partners built it.
The Third Line was never programmed to sell like a shop. It was programmed to build an audience, a conversation, a place where people could feel connected. Club nights. Film screenings. Artist talks. The gallery as meeting point, not retail space. That philosophy is why it lasted.
Artists who started without gallery representation now show in Western institutions. An Arabic name on a Western gallery's roster is no longer unusual. The ecosystem has flourished. Rahbar does not take sole credit. But she was the catalyst, and this is the record of how that happened.
What Sunny Rahbar built that no one else was building
The story of The Third Line is the story of someone who understood, before the market confirmed it, that the artists of the Middle East were not secondary participants in the global art conversation. They were its missing voice. Rahbar did not wait for the infrastructure to exist. She built it, one exhibition, one artist, one conversation at a time.
What makes this story matter beyond the Gulf is the methodology. She built audience before she built sales. She hosted film screenings and talks and club nights before she went to Frieze. She defended artists who had no representation and watched them grow into artists who are now shown in every significant institution in the Western world. The sequence is not accidental. It is the correct order of operations for building something that lasts.
This is the conversation Antakly Projects exists to have: not the artist who is already on every platform, but the person who built the platform so the artist could exist. Follow Sunny Rahbar's ongoing work at @sunra77 and explore The Third Line at thethirdline.com.
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