Where is Home? Menart Fair 2026

For its 7th edition, Menart Fair poses the question: Where is Home? As Laure d’Hauteville, founder and director of Menart, explains, “We asked artists the question: what is home? Not your house, not in terms of education or region, but inside of yourself, when you feel at home.” It’s a poignant question, especially during an extremely fractured moment in the Middle East, when territories are facing peril and borders are shifting on a daily basis.

Menart, the art fair dedicated solely to art from the Middle East and North Africa, has always worked around a theme, provoking conversation around ideas that are often seen as taboo – whether in the region or by the people visiting the fair; The 2024 edition was dedicated to only women artists, “people thought I was crazy,” laughs d’Hauteville, while last year’s fair was based around ‘An Ode to Softness.’ D’Hauteville has been working with Menart region artists for over 30-years, and she knows the challenges involved, whether that means logistical challenges, “you cannot imagine how complicated it is to ship artworks this year,” she says, as well as the perception by the public, which has often been slow to catch on to the fair’s mission. “I really want people to understand that Menart is an engaged art fair. Inviting these galleries and helping them to come – to give them a showcase in Paris with their artists and show the public that the work they are doing is important.” This year brings together 34 galleries from 18 countries, including Syria, Iran, Libya, and Sudan, and presents more than 100 artists, including 58 men and 47 women.

To begin preparing for the fair, d’Hauteville and her team started talking with artists about home. “Some people said, home is where we spend the holidays with our family, some said it was the food their grandmother cooked on Sunday. For many it is about family. Some connect it to smell; In fact, it is really where we are ourselves,” says d’Hauteville. “The artists brought together for the 2026 edition of Menart Fair explore what “Home” truly means to them: language, body, memory, territory, faith, transmission. Their works give form to identities in motion, shaped by exile, circulation, and encounters with the Other. All media contribute to this exploration; all the senses contribute to conveying this intimate and collective experience,” she states.

The scenography is by Sarra Fandri and will create the feeling of a large city in the Middle East, with different spaces that encourage exchange, encounter and discovery. “We wanted people to have an experience that reminds them of architecture from the Middle East,” d’Hauteville explains, a scenography that “celebrates the pleasure of wandering and the unexpected.”

The project room is curated by Wasyle Tamzali, a lawyer, writer and former director of UNESCO’s Women’s Rights Program, and is dedicated to the contemporary Algerian art scene. Tamzali has been working in arts and culture since the 2010s, founding Ateliers Sauvages, in Algiers, in 2015. “Fouad Bouatba, Naïm Boukir, Rima Djahnine, Sérine Hamami, Abdelmohcene Hamel, Houssem Harrak, Mounir Gouri, Rima Rezaiguia, Hakim Rezaoui, Achraf Saadi and Fella Tamzali’s works tell us about our world as much as they tell us about themselves. Each artist’s aesthetic experience is rooted in a political, social and historical context. All the way to Gaza. Without forgetting beauty, that fusion of talent and thought that Etel Adnan speaks to us about… The fusion takes place when the beauty and implicit talent of a painting reach the height of the idea that drives it,” states Wassyla Tamzali.

Since its founding, Menart has continued to grow and expand beyond the fair itself, including establishing Menart Friends, an association that helps the young generation of artists through support for research, travel funds, production funds. This year, Menart partners with Maison Boucheron, who will offer a cash prize to an artist during the fair. This will be an ongoing partnership that “recognizes an artist for the singularity of her vision, her creative freedom, the rigour of her practice and the strength of her artistic language.”

Menart hosts a conference program during the four days on themes connected to the fair, including “where is home,” as well as on broader issues related to contemporary Arabic art.

Menart Fair: Where is Home, takes place at 116 rue de Turenne, Paris, between October 23-25. For more information visit: Menart Fair.

@menart_fair