Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I show how immigrant artists in Dubai navigate their art practice after the financial crisis that has hit Dubai in 2008. The city might have recovered, but how did it affect immigrant artists?

Paper long abstract:

The Arab Gulf is usually not associated with austerity or economic hardship, due to a public narrative of the success of rentier states in the oil-rich countries of the Arab Gulf. The financial crisis, however, did not spare cities such as Dubai and affected Dubai's burgeoning art scene as well as its artists. Many artists in Dubai are 2nd generation immigrants, and their right to stay depends on the state's unpredictable visa and residency system. Unlike more privileged Emirati artists that receive state-funding for their art practice, these artists have to fend for themselves economically. While the city of Dubai might have recovered after the latest financial crisis, I argue that these artists haven't. If they don't find jobs, they won't just have economic problems but also lose their residency permits and thereby their homes. In this paper, I trace the way in which these artists in Dubai deal with crisis in both their art practice as well as their everyday lives. Which artistic and life strategies do these artists develop vis-à-vis economic hardship, unfair visa regulations, state censorship, and phases of precarity? This paper answers this question based on six months of ethnographic field research in Dubai from 2015-2017. It thereby will provide a perspective on economic hardship that differs from monolithic ideas of entire state austerities and instead shows how recession lives on for immigrant artists in states that have already recovered economically.