Image credits: Portrait, Art Here 2025 at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Courtesy of Richard Mille.
Sophie Mayuko Arni is a contemporary art curator working between the UAE and Japan.
Sophie Mayuko Arni is a Swiss-Japanese curator who currently works between Abu Dhabi and Tokyo to innovate models of cross-cultural exchange through public art, site-specific exhibitions, and digital publishing. An advocate for East-meets-East dialogues, most of her curatorial work has connected the contemporary art scenes of the Arabian Gulf and Japan with new visions of heritage, architecture, ecology, and technology. She is also the Founding Editor of Global Art Daily, an independent 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 Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Tokyo, and Atami, including Hashel Al Lamki, Shaikha Al Ketbi, Bady Dalloul, Rintaro Fuse, Heijiro Yagi, Khalid Mezaina, Christopher Joshua Benton, and waiwai research and design lab. Previously a curator at Startbahn’s SRR Project Space, Tokyo, she then served as Artistic and Curatorial Manager at Pico International, Dubai, pitching and delivering large-scale public art projects in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, notably Noor Riyadh, the world’s largest light art festival.
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 previously held the role of Artistic Manager for Noor Riyadh’s fourth edition “Light Years Apart” (2024), which featured 62 light artworks spread across hubs throughout the Saudi capital. She also curated 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 (2022).
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. In 2025, she completed the inaugural Bukhara Biennial BBBB Curatorial School, organized by the Arts and Culture Development Foundation of Uzbekistan in collaboration with Delfina Foundation.
Selected Press:
Dazed MENA
Selection Arts
Arab News Japan
Subrosa
The National
Identity Magazine