One of a handful of pioneers who shaped the UAE’s early commercial art scene, Isabelle van den Eynde opened her first gallery, B21, in 2006 in Dubai’s Al Quoz industrial district. At a time when contemporary art galleries were just beginning to stake their place in the local cultural landscape, she exhibited challenging artists whose names still figure on her roster today—Rokni and Ramin Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, Mohammed Kazem, and the late Hassan Sharif, considered a trailblazer of contemporary art in the UAE.
In 2010, van den Eynde founded her eponymous space. Alongside her long-time co-conspirators came new artists from the Middle East and North Africa and beyond.