Sophie Arni is a guest curator of ArtConnect's Artists to Watch

Sophie Mayuko Arni is a Swiss-Japanese independent curator, writer, and editor based between Tokyo and Dubai. Committed to amplifying voices of Arab and Asian contemporary art, she founded Global Art Daily, a digital archive documenting the Gulf’s art scenes in a regional and global context. 

In 2016, she started the "East-East: UAE meets Japan" exhibition series at the NYU Abu Dhabi Project Space. Over five editions, she brought the works of over twenty artists, architects, and collectives to various galleries and festivals in the UAE and Japan, including CHI-KA Space (2017-8), HB.Nezu (2021), Block House Tokyo (2021), and Atami Art Grant (2022), connecting the Gulf and Japan's contemporary histories with shared visions of ecologies, futurities, and nostalgia. 

She curated a number of solo exhibitions in the UAE, such as Shōei Matsuda's public art installation “The Big Flat Now” at Dubai Festival City Mall (2023), Lamya Gargash’s solo exhibition "Isthmus", retracing decades of her photography practice, at The Third Line, Dubai (2023), and Christopher Joshua Benton's lightbox installation "Mubeen: City as Archive" at The Third Line Shop, Dubai (2023). 

Most recently, she was part of the curatorial team for Noor Riyadh’s fourth edition “Light Years Apart” (2024), serving as Artistic Manager for Riyadh's city-wide light art festival. She holds a B.A. in Art & Art History from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MPhil in Curatorial Practices from the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.

Learn more about Sophie Arni

ArtConnect | Instagram | LinkedIn