Photo credit: Ron John
Press:
Arab News Japan
Subrosa
The National
Identity Magazine
Sophie Arni is a Swiss-Japanese curator based between the Gulf and Japan.
Sophie Mayuko Arni is an independent curator working across public art projects, site-specific exhibitions and digital publishing. She is the Founding Editor of Global Art Daily, overseeing the publication of biannual E-Issues archiving Arab and Asian contemporary art scenes in a global context. An advocate for intra-Asian dialogues, her curatorial work aims to connect the Gulf and Japan with shared visions of heritage, architecture, futurism, and ecology.
She started the “East-East: UAE meets Japan” exhibition series in 2016. Throughout five volumes, the exhibition series brought together the works of UAE-based and Japanese artists in various venues in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Tokyo. Previously a curator at the SRR Project Space, Tokyo, she then worked as Artistic and Curatorial Manager at Pico EMEA, pitching and delivering large-scale public art projects in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Most recently, she was the Artistic Manager of Noor Riyadh’s fourth edition “Light Years Apart” (2024), which featured 62 light artworks spread across three hubs and two locations of the Saudi capital. She also curated “The Big Flat Now” at Dubai Festival City Mall (2023), Lamya Gargash’s solo show “Isthmus” at The Third Line, Dubai (2023), and “Gravitation” by Jukan Tateisi, Shōei Matsuda, and Takeshi Yasura at SRR Project Space, Tokyo (2023). She is the Guest Curator of Art Here 2025: Shadows, the fifth edition of the Richard Mille Art Prize at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, commissioning outdoor sculptures from artists connected to Japan and the GCC.
She graduated with a B.A. in Art & Art History from NYU Abu Dhabi and with an MPhil in Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices from Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Global Arts.
About East-East: UAE meets Japan: Throughout five volumes, the exhibition series brought together the works of Farah Al Qasimi, Alaa Edris, Hashel Al Lamki, Lamya Gargash, waiwai research and design agency, Khalid Mezaina, Shaikha Al Ketbi, Christopher Joshua Benton, Tomoki Kurokawa, Bady Dalloul, Heijiro Yagi, and Rintaro Fuse, amongst others, in various venues in Japan and the UAE including the NYU Abu Dhabi Project Space (2016), CHI-KA Space on Alserkal Avenue (2017-18), HB.Nezu (2021), Block House Tokyo (2021), and Atami Art Grant (2022).
Writing and publishing: Sophie Mayuko Arni is the Founder of Global Art Daily (GAD), a publishing and curatorial platform for the growth of the Gulf’s contemporary art scene. Since 2015, GAD has published more than 100 texts on artists and exhibitions contributing to the Gulf’s burgeoning art scene, with an international team of editors and contributors. Sophie has also written exhibition reviews and artist interviews for titles such as Arab News, Architectural Digest Middle East, and SOLE Magazine, and has conducted research for The Fiker Institute, a Dubai-based think tank, on exhibitions of Arab artists in Japan. She often moderates talk panels about the contemporary art in the UAE.