Samia Saleh is the woman behind many of the famous artworks and installations you see around town, but this local entrepreneur has many other facets to her. Her name resounds in the local art community, for being one of the pioneers supporting local talent and bringing international artists into the Gulf region. This expertise at identifying the right talent and promoting them, in turn, led to the prestigious commission of furnishing the artworks for the Burj Khalifa and Downtown Burj Dubai, when the developments came up.

Meet Samia Saleh, a women of many facets, with a particularly talented stroke in the art arena. Her Courtyard Gallery is little oasis of an art haven, located in the famous dome-shaped Courtyard building that artfully graces a corner of the industrial hub of Al Quoz. It's the first gallery, in not just the UAE, but also the Gulf region to host works by famous artists like Renoir and Dali, and also promote emerging contemporary local and Middle Eastern artists at the same time.

For Samia, the journey began when she organised a show of European fine art works, in association with a gallery in France, in 1998. "After the success of that exhibition, I decided we needed our own gallery here, and we opened the Courtyard in 2001," Samia says, seated at a large but minimalist glass table, in her office above the gallery. Today, Courtyard Gallery is ranked among the top tier galleries in the UAE.

"We don't position any particular kind of art here, but we do plenty of shows by international artists, and focus on upcoming local talent. I like to encourage Emiratis and ones from the region, as well as younger artists."

Over the course of 13 years, the gallery has shown works of many artists who've evolved and moved forward in their game. "They were the ones who were not initially known, but thanks to the media coverage we get, and our large number of visitors, they received the right exposure," she states.

An Emirati national, Samia was born here, doing her schooling up to the secondary level in the UAE, before moving to the US, where she went on to study graphic design and art history at the American University of Washington DC. "I stayed on in the US for four more years, before moving back to the UAE, getting 
married, taking a break when my children were born... and then I started working in art."

People ask her if the art scene in the UAE has developed a lot, she says. "Of course, it has grown significantly; actually, it has passed hundreds of stages — compared to the time it takes for art to usually grow in other places — from when I started, and it has started evolving fuelled by its own forces, in a sort of self-fulfilling way. What with the all the art fairs, shows and exhibitions taking place now, it has created a new buzz in the region, and helped a lot of emerging artists come up."

Did she ever think it would happen? "Did anyone think all this happen — the country's dazzling growth and all the towering skyscrapers around us?" Samia smiles. "I still remember the houses constructed out of palm trees and clay from my childhood days, like the ones you see in Bastakiya now, where my great aunt's house still stands. But the city has evolved a lot, and art just happ-ened to follow. And it's not only in Dubai, but Abu Dhabi and Sharjah too."

But "we still have to go miles before competing with the rest of the world," she feels. "Art took 
its time to evolve over centuries in the rest of the world... we need more time, and more importantly, art education."

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