To collect is, in many ways, to insist on continuity (of beauty, of meaning, of memory), especially in moments when the world feels anything but stable. This issue arrives at such a moment. Across the region and beyond, uncertainty has become a daily condition, its reverberations felt not only in headlines but in homes, in studios, and in the quiet, persistent act of making.
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And yet, it is precisely here, within these interiors, that another narrative takes shape. The homes in this issue are not simply sites of display. They are living archives. Each room, each object, each work of art speaks to a way of seeing that resists erasure, that gathers and preserves, and insists on presence.
These pages feature collectors such as Christian Louboutin, who opens up his transportive world in Paris; gallerist Leila Heller’s nurturing New York abode (page 92); and art patron Tariq Al Jaidah’s cartographic residence in Doha – a living map of Middle Eastern art, photographed on the very day of the Israeli–US attack on Iran.
There is also Moroccan collector-turned-gallerist Amal Rakibi’s deeply intuitive space in Dubai, which graces our cover. Collecting, within these contexts, becomes more than acquisition – rather, it is a form of stewardship. A subtle but powerful declaration that the region’s cultural voice is not only enduring, but evolving: layered, complex, and unapologetically its own.
That commitment extends beyond the walls of these homes. In this issue, we turn to artists whose practices are shaping the region’s visual language. Safwan Dahoul, one of Syria’s most prominent voices, offers an unusually personal reflection on his work and his forthcoming exhibition in Dubai (now postponed until May). His paintings have long served as meditations on memory, absence, and the inner life, and are shaped as much by personal experience as by the shifting realities of the region.
Alongside him, a younger generation asserts itself with equal clarity. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, whose delicately arresting scenes of domestic life in the Gulf grace our second cover, captures something both intimate and expansive: a portrait of the everyday that feels at once specific and deeply resonant, especially today when our homes have once again become our refuge.
Together, these collectors and artists form a continuum – one that oscillates between the past and present, between what is inherited and reimagined. If there is a common thread, it is this: a belief that spaces matter, and that what we choose to live with shapes how we understand ourselves and our world.
