Image credits: Portrait, Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation.
Sophie Mayuko Arni is a curator based between Abu Dhabi and Tokyo.
Sophie Mayuko Arni is a Swiss-Japanese curator working between Abu Dhabi and Tokyo. An advocate for East-meets-East dialogues, most of her independent curatorial work has connected the contemporary art scenes of the Arabian Gulf and Japan with new visions of futurism, architecture, ecology, and technology. She is also the Founding Editor of Global Art Daily, a digital art publication born in Abu Dhabi, archiving the Gulf’s contemporary art practices in a global context.
In 2016, she started the “East-East: UAE meets Japan” exhibition series at NYU Abu Dhabi Project Space. Throughout five volumes, the exhibition series brought together the works of 20+ UAE-based and Japanese artists in various galleries and festivals in Dubai, Tokyo, and Atami.
Most recently, she was the Guest Curator of Art Here 2025: Shadows, the fifth edition of the Richard Mille Art Prize at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. She was also the Artistic Manager for Noor Riyadh’s fourth edition “Light Years Apart” (2024), which featured 62 light artworks spread across three hubs of the Saudi capital.
Her previous curated exhibitions include Shōei Matsuda’s “The Big Flat Now” at Dubai Festival City Mall (2023), Lamya Gargash’s solo show “Isthmus” at The Third Line, Dubai (2023), “Gravitation” by Jukan Tateisi, Shōei Matsuda, and Takeshi Yasura at SRR Project Space, Tokyo (2023), and “East-East, UAE meets Japan Vol.5: Atami Blues” for Atami Art Grant, Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan (2022). Her grassroots curatorial practice has been celebrated for innovating cross-cultural exchange models through public art, site-specific exhibitions, and social media activations.
She holds a B.A. in Art & Art History from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MPhil in Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices from Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Global Arts, Yuko Hasegawa Lab. She also completed the inaugural Bukhara Biennial BBBB Curatorial School, organized by the Arts and Culture Development Foundation of Uzbekistan in collaboration with Delfina Foundation.
She is the Co-Curator of The Aural Sea, the upcoming National Pavilion of Uzbekistan at the 61st Venice Art Biennale (2026).
Selected Press:
Dazed MENA
Selection Arts
Arab News Japan
The National
Identity Magazine