Richard Mille has unveiled The Present Tense, the third volume in its Art Book series, a new exploration of contemporary art from the Arab world and Türkiye. Curated by Dr Ridha Moumni, Chairman of Christie’s Middle East and Africa, the bilingual English–Arabic edition examines how artists turn memory, tradition and inherited visual languages into work that feels distinctly present, in its third collaboration with Arabian Publishing.

The book follows artists working across the region, from Tunis and Riyadh to Beirut and Istanbul. It looks at how carpets, calligraphy, displacement, return, rebuilt cities and landscapes become the starting points for new forms of expression. 

Rather than treating the past as something fixed, The Present Tense presents it as a living influence. It draws connections between a weaver’s geometry and poured concrete, between an ancient calligraphic line and a contemporary brushstroke, and between private passion and public legacy. Islamic visual tradition appears throughout as a contemporary system of geometry and light. 

The volume also revisits movements such as Pointillism, Cubism and Surrealism, showing how artists across the region treat them as visual language to be taken apart and remake them from their own cultural standpoint. Political art is explored not as a separate genre but as a language through which artists give enduring form to conflict, displacement and loss.

The book features four covers, each created by a different artist. Saudi artist Alia Ahmad evokes memory through soft fields of colour, while Syrian artist Jason Seife reimagines carpet motifs as they wear away into raw concrete. Emirati artist Juma Al Haj explores language and rhythm, and Egyptian artist Nada Baraka moves between abstraction and the surreal. 

For Richard Mille, the project reflects a belief that watchmaking and art share a common discipline. “The relationship between exceptional craft and exceptional art is not decorative, it is structural. Both demand rigour, intention, and a precise understanding of what has come before”, said Peter Harrison, CEO of Richard Mille EMEA. 

The Present Tense stands alongside the Richard Mille Art Prize, launched with Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2021 through the annual Art Here exhibition. Three volumes in, the Art Book series has become a lasting record of the movements, ideas and collections shaping contemporary art in the region.