;Commissioner & Director-at-Large In 2012, the director of Art Dubai, Antonia Carver, invited Basar to reinvent its associated cultural program, the Global Art Forum, which had been running since 2007 in a form derived from
Art Basel Talks. Global Art Forum 6, under the directorship of Basar, was entitled "The Medium of Media" and took place in Doha, Qatar (18/19 March 2012) and Dubai (21–24 March 2012). It expanded the disciplinary remit to include novelists, historians, filmmakers and journalists; as well as introducing the Globe Books imprint; long-term research projects and curated art and media exhibitions. "The Medium of Media" investigated the meaning of the word "media" in an art context as well as the role that media played in the unfolding of the
Arab Spring which was barely a year old at that point. This was followed by Global Art Forum 7 (17–23 March 2013), commissioned by Basar, directed by H.G.Masters, and entitled "It Means This." The theme of language has been an ongoing concern for Basar, who has said, "Contemporary reality is often ahead of our ability to describe it, because we are still left behind in the terminology of the previous era or moment. Such a schism leads to blindness about what is actually happening to us, around us." Global Art Forum 8 (15/16 & 19–21 March 2014) was commissioned by Basar, directed by Omar Berrada and
Ala Younis, and entitled "Meanwhile... History." It assembled an imaginary timeline of histories lost, forgotten and erased. Topics included Soviet Orientalism, Pan Kaffirism, Ibn Khaldun's
The Muqadimmah, and Trajectories of the Sudanese Gulf. The 2015 edition of Global Art Forum 9, entitled "Download Update?" was co-directed by
Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi and
Turi Munthe, with Basar acting as Director-as-Large. 2016's edition marked the tenth anniversary of the Global Art Forum. It was called "The Future Was" (9/14 January & 16–18 March 2016), co-directed by Amal Khalaf and Uzma Z. Rizvi, with Basar as Commissioner, focusing on how visions of the future have been formulated in the past. Guests included
Hito Steyerl, Elie Ayache,
Alice Gorman, Adrienne Maree Brown, Noura Al Noman,
Lauren Beukes and
Sophia Al Maria. "Trading Places" was the title of the 2017 iteration of the Global Art Forum, co-directed by Antonia Carver and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, with Basar, again, as Commissioner. ;Reception The intellectual ambitions and playful format of the Global Art Forum have been positively received by audiences and critics alike. In 2012,
Tod Wodicka wrote in
The National newspaper, "That GAF took place on an island felt somehow important, and illustrated the oft repeated—and manifestly true—claim that it acted as Art Dubai's brain." And then in 2013, Einar Engström wrote in
Leap magazine, "Among the invited guests, the 'artist' was barely present. He was chiefly superseded by those outside the art-industry consciousness: the political scientist, the translator, the novelist, the archaeologist, and so on—those who have as much or even more impact on the world and its artists than do the pedestaled curator and critic." In a preview for the 2016 edition, Rachel Spence in the
Financial Times said "The forum has come to be recognised as a hub of ideas that has helped to fuel the development of the contemporary art scene in the Gulf." ==Format==