MENA Artists Are Having a Market Moment That’s Being Built to Last
The art world’s perception of the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa)—and especially of the Gulf—tends to gravitate toward the concentration of wealth and the scale of cultural investment, particularly the proliferation of internationally branded museums and high-profile partnerships backed by local governments as part of broader efforts to move beyond oil-dependent economies and reposition these countries as global destinations for business and pleasure. Yet in the Gulf, this is anything but a sudden phenomenon. In most of these countries—Qatar among them, where Art Basel opens later this week—the shift reflects sustained groundwork laid across multiple levels to build cultural ecosystems that have been taking shape for more than a decade.
Following the $17.3 million total achieved by Sotheby’s first auction in Saudi Arabia—with a second Origins sale on the horizon—and with two major global fair brands set to launch in 2026 (Art Basel Qatar and Frieze Abu Dhabi), the MENA region emerged as the one most experts (76 percent) expressed optimism about and were most willing to bet on, according to ArtTactic’s latest Global Art Market Outlook report. That optimism appears grounded less in short-term market cycles than in long-term investment in cultural infrastructure and direct, government-backed partnerships with international museums, fairs and auction platforms.
As a result, the market for art from the region is growing in both international visibility and price, even as the MENA auction market has historically been one of the least closely tracked, reported on and systematically documented segments of the global art market. With new data compiled by ArtTactic, Observer examined the dynamics shaping the auction market for MENA artists ahead of Art Basel Qatar.
In 2025, international auction houses increased their combined market share in the MENA region to 65.1 percent. Christie’s reported a 73 percent increase in sales, reaching $10.2 million—its highest total since 2017—while Sotheby’s and Phillips also posted solid growth of 20.4 percent and 24.6 percent, respectively, according to the report.
While MENA-focused auctions remained the primary sales channel for Modern and Contemporary art from the region in 2025, sales of works by MENA artists also rose across international Post-War and Contemporary auctions—up 44 percent in value and 25.2 percent in number of lots sold.
While London dominates as the leading hub for auctioning MENA art, accounting for 49.1 percent of total sales value, Riyadh is emerging as a new auction center for Modern and Contemporary art from the region, capturing 13.1 percent of the market. This shift was largely driven by the Origins sale, which achieved $17.3 million and set several artist records, drawing renewed international attention to some of the year’s strongest-performing names.
Against this backdrop, it is telling to observe how power dynamics within the region are evolving under the weight of geopolitics. Iranian art continues to dominate—accounting for 27.3 percent of total sales value and 51.1 percent of artists offered at auction—yet sales declined sharply, falling 41 percent year over year. On one hand, this underscores Iran’s deep cultural history and the resilience of an art scene that has endured despite structural constraints. On the other hand, it reflects the increasingly difficult conditions under the current regime, as well as shifting priorities among local and expatriate collectors who once played a central role in sustaining the market.
By contrast, works by Lebanese, Egyptian and Iraqi artists saw strong gains, with sales rising 33.4 percent, 47.8 percent and 62.4 percent respectively—suggesting a gradual rebalancing within the regional market rather than a simple contraction at the top. Lebanese women artists in particular played a significant role, accounting for 44 percent of total sales by women artists from the region in 2025.
The best-performing MENA artists and the ones to watch
The artists leading the market are not necessarily newly discovered names, but figures already well established within international circuits. Continuing her steady international ascent, Etel Adnan once again emerged as the top-performing MENA artist by total auction value in 2025, reaching $2.54 million in sales across 29 lots—a 4.0 percent increase from 2024. The highest price achieved in 2025 was one of her signature abstract compositions, which sold for $381,000 with fees at Sotheby's New York in May. All her other auction results exceeded the five-digit presale estimate, landing in the hundred-thousand range, signaling sustained and growing demand for her work—further amplified by White Cube’s new global representation and their major January show celebrating the centenary of her birth.
The second top-selling artist by total value was Turkish-born, internationally recognized digital artist Refik Anadol, who reached $1.02 million in auction sales in 2025 with six lots sold—a dramatic rise from just $68,000 in 2024, when only two works traded. The jump is particularly striking given the ongoing skepticism surrounding digital art in the secondary market. His most expensive work to sell in 2025 was A Goal in Life: Leo Messi x Refik Anadol, a digital artwork capturing the emotional essence of Lionel Messi’s most meaningful goal, which raised $1.87 million in an online auction at Christie’s in July. In a traditional live auction context, however, Anadol’s top result came from Machine Hallucinations – Space, inspired by a collaboration with NASA, which sold for $900,000 ($750,000 hammer) to the newly launched Bity Foundation during Sotheby’s debut Diriyah auction in February 2025.
The third top-performing artist by total auction value may be less familiar to a broader international audience. Louay Kayyali, one of Syria’s most influential modern artists, realized $994,168 at auction in 2025. The figure was largely driven by the record-breaking sale of his monumental painting, Then What ?? (1965), which fetched $900,000—a 150 percent increase over the low estimate—in Origins. Kayyali’s previous auction record had been set just one year earlier, when Fisherboy (1976) sold for $341,200 at Bonhams on June 5, 2024.
Mohammed Sami depicts a sparse interior with a bed and curtained window rendered in muted yellows, browns, and blacks." width="970" height="889" data-caption='Louay Kayali’s <em>Then What ??</em> (1965) sold for $900,000 at Sotheby’s in Saudi Arabia, more than one and a half times its low estimate. <span class="lazyload media-credit">Sotheby's</span>'>Looking more broadly at where the market has been most active, results suggest that—largely driven by historically significant names and ongoing reassessment—the mid-tier segment is where MENA art is currently thriving at auction. In 2025, the $50,000-100,000 price bracket delivered the strongest performance, accounting for 27 percent of total sales, with both sales value and number of lots sold up 33.3 percent year over year. The over-$100,000 tier rose by a more modest 2.3 percent, primarily fueled by high-value transactions above $500,000. At the lower end, the sub-$50,000 segment still posted 7.2 percent growth, as younger contemporary artists from the region continue to attract both institutional and market attention.
Notably, while the so-called ultra-contemporary sector elsewhere remains in decline following the collapse of its pandemic-era speculative bubble—down 39.1 percent in 2025—auction sales for MENA artists under 45 moved in the opposite direction, rising 5.1 percent to $2.8 million. That growth, however, remains concentrated among a relatively small group of artists with established international careers and exposure. Alongside Anadol, this includes Iraqi painter Mohammed Sami, who achieved total auction sales of $647,582 in 2025 and ranked second for the top hammer price, with Poor Folk II selling for $571,500 with fees at Sotheby’s in May. Iranian artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo also continued to gain traction—particularly in Asia—following a solo exhibition at the Long Museum last year and reaching $370,160 in total auction value in 2025, with top prices of $99,000 and $45,000 in New York and $89,997 in Hong Kong. Close behind were figures such as Doron Langberg ($117,664 in auction sales) and Iranian-American Tala Madani ($117,243).
Women are leading the market thanks to renewed institutional attention
Another set of auction data complicates a long-standing stereotype. While much progress remains to be made, several countries across the region have already taken, or are in the process of taking, concrete steps away from historically extreme patriarchal structures and toward greater gender parity. That shift is increasingly reflected in cultural representation, particularly in Gulf institutions. Auction sales by women artists from the MENA region rose 34.6 percent in 2025, reaching $9.6 million—the second-highest total of the past decade.
In 2025, 116 women artists from the region were included in global auction sales, up from 107 in 2024, with an 87.2 percent sell-through rate. Activity strengthened across both volume and pricing, with lots sold rising 5.5 percent to 246 and sell-through rates improving accordingly. Beyond the sustained global attention commanded by Etel Adnan, several of the women leading the market are more niche or long-overlooked figures who are only now receiving broader recognition.
Among them is Samia Halaby, the Palestinian-born, Tribeca-based abstract artist and early pioneer of digital art. At 88, Halaby’s dynamic abstract compositions have seen prices rise at auction, often approaching $100,000, in parallel with renewed institutional attention. In 2025-26, Halaby had a major solo exhibition, Abstract in Motion, at Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut, showcasing works from the 1980s through 2025, including her explorations in digital and kinetic practices. She was also recognized in 2025 with accolades, including the MUNCH Award for Artistic Freedom. Together, these developments contributed to her strongest market year on record, surpassing her previous peak of $781,654 in 2023.
During Art Basel Qatar, several works by Halaby are also on view at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art as part of “we refuse,” a major survey exhibition running through February 9, 2026, bringing together 15 artists whose practices engage with resistance, resilience, displacement and political urgency. Many of the paintings on view were originally slated for Halaby’s canceled retrospective at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington, which was withdrawn just weeks before its scheduled opening in February 2024.
Another artist who continues to perform consistently well at auction is Saloua Raouda Choucair, widely regarded as a key figure in developing a region-specific abstract language, particularly through sculpture. Her work is held in major international collections, including Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Louvre Abu Dhabi and Mathaf in Doha. Last November, her Poem (1966) was a headline lot in Christie’s “Silsila: Highlights from the Dalloul Collection,” selling for approximately $512,700, well above its low estimate and ranking among the strongest results for Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern art at Christie’s that year. A sculpture by Choucair also sold for around $144,000 at Sotheby’s last year. One of her works was additionally included in the group exhibition “Finding My Blue Sky” at Lisson Gallery in London last May.
Huguette Caland, also from Lebanon, is known for her chromatic and energetic explorations through a bold abstract language that intertwines figuration, cosmology, corporeal forms and sequence. In 2025, Caland reached a total auction value of $651,269 across eight lots, led by Untitled (1985), which achieved an $85,000 hammer price (approximately $102,000 with premium) in Origins.
Among the top 10 female MENA artists by auction value in 2025 was pioneering Turkish modernist Fahrelnissa Zeid, who generated $592,011 across seven lots. Her strongest result of the year was Carnations (1946), which sold at Sotheby’s London in October 2025 for $199,147, far exceeding its estimate of $53,106-79,659. All other paintings exceeded their estimates as well, selling for around $100,000. Known for her kaleidoscopic abstractions blending Byzantine, Islamic and Persian influences with Western abstraction, Zeid’s standing auction record remains $2.74 million, achieved by Break of the Atom and Vegetal Life (1962) at Christie’s in 2013. Contributing to renewed market attention was her inclusion in Adriano Pedrosa’s Venice Biennale in 2024.
Worth watching among younger MENA women artists for performance-to-estimate ratios—with remarkable jumps from estimate to final price—is Tunisian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Nadia Ayari. Her Loop III sold for $38,100 at Phillips New York in May, far exceeding its $4,000-6,000 estimate. Another painting, Fold 6, sold in April at Phillips London for £15,240, nearly six times its £2,500-3,500 estimate. This series of strong results propelled Ayari to sixth place, just behind Tala Madani, in the Top 30 MENA Contemporary Artists ranking by total auction value, reaching $88,462 across four lots. Her presence in notable collections such as the Pinault Collection and the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah undoubtedly supported this momentum, and after featuring her at Art Basel Paris in its group booth, Selma Feriani is set to dedicate a solo presentation to the artist at Art Basel Qatar.
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