Artist, curator, institutional director – Al Qasimi can claim to belong to nearly every constituent sector of the artworld (albeit these days she’s not really that well known for her painting). Plus, in the real world, she’s royalty. And yet, in recent years she has leveraged her expertise and knowledge of art from the Gulf region and further afield, to operate in geographies beyond the Emirate and areas in which she can absolutely rely on royal privilege. An exhibition of paintings she curated by the senior Māori artist Emily Karaka, which opened this autumn at the Sharjah Art Foundation, of which she is also president and founding director, may be indicative of the direction planned for the 2026 Biennale of Sydney. Al Qasimi was this year appointed curator of the Australian survey, which she will work on while developing her plans for the 2025 Aichi Triennale in Japan, of which she is artistic director (the first non-Japanese person to occupy the position, although she speaks the language, having studied there). Having previously curated the Lahore Biennale (in 2020) and the United Arab Emirates Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Al Qasimi is in demand, and her global presence is reflected in her home institution’s programming, which, in addition to Karaka, has featured survey exhibitions of South African multimedia icon William Kentridge, Brazilian painter Antonio Dias and Pakistani artist and Women’s Action Forum cofounder Lala Rukh, not to mention the annual March Meeting conference. Next February marks the opening of the 16th Sharjah Biennial (Al Qasimi curated the 2023 edition, developing a programme initiated by the late Okwui Enwezor, having been involved with the event – as director – since 2003, when she cocurated the sixth edition). For this edition, Al Qasimi has appointed an all-female team of curators that includes many of the leading lights among curators operating in the context of the global majority, including Sri Lanka’s Natasha Ginwala, Indonesian curator Alia Swastika, Bahraini-Singaporean artist Amal Khalaf, New Zealand artist Megan Tamati-Quennell and Turkish curator Zeynep Öz. Moreover, in the context of an artworld in which cancellations and boycotts are rife – coming from every direction – and generating a consequent culture of fear, Al Qasimi remains one of the few voices still prepared to use the platform art (and royal privilege) affords them in order to express their opinions directly and to keep discussions that most people allow to fade away firmly in the spotlight, whether they concern the current carnage in Palestine and Lebanon or those suffering from other conflicts across the globe. Beyond all that, Al Qasimi also serves as president of the International Biennale Association, president of the hugely influential Africa Institute in Sharjah and on the board of Ashkal Alwan in Beirut. She is also on the advisory boards of the Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi and Darat al Funun in Amman. Beyond her involvement with art, she also founded the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and earlier this year presented a clothing collection in London which was developed from the work of her late brother, who worked in the fashion industry. But beyond her personal achievements, Al Qasimi is also a symbol of the increasing influence of the Gulf region in the spheres of finance, commerce, politics, sports and entertainment, and, of course (but perhaps primarily by virtue of the first two elements on this list) art.