East meets West at Art Dubai, the first annual contemporary art fair to take place in this dynamic city, where cultural partnerships and a stimulating dialogue on contemporary art are being fostered and enriched. The fair began on March 19th and will continue to run through March 22nd. Almost 70 galleries in 30 different countries are participating, including those in the Middle East, North America, South America, Africa and Australia. The UAE has already received much attention for being the future second home of the Louvre, and Dubai specifically for its chic cosmopolitan nightlife, glitzy hotels, and opulent skyscrapers.

On the margins of this cultural courting, however, are some headlining South Asian artists who feature themes in their work reminiscent of the UAE’s longstanding issues regarding migrant labor conditions and abuse.

The UAE as a whole has reached astonishing levels of economic growth over the last five years, fueling an ever-expanding real estate and construction boom. This boom has made Dubai home to over half a million migrant laborers, mostly from South Asia, who are responsibly for building this modern-day metropolis from the ground up. They make up 90 percent of the UAE’s labor force and bring home approximately 4 dollars per day, while working under horrific, and even deadly conditions.

Jitish Kallat, an artist from Mumbai, addresses themes of survival and human struggle by recreating life-sized crashed cars made out of bones. His inspiration, he says, comes from his own experiences and observations of survival struggles in Mumbai. Yet these themes mirror much of the narrative on migrant labor in the UAE. Muhammad Zeeshand, a former signboard painter from Pakistan, creates multi-media work depicting an undercurrent of violence, embedded tensions, and the “depravity behind the social and political milieu in contemporary society.” Contemporary society sounds a lot like Dubai, where violent rioting over labor abuses continues to threaten the status quo.

and learn more about migrant labor issues in the UAE by watching this Human Rights Watch audio/visual narrative. It’s set to a series of captivating black and white images of the Dubai cityscape, and includes behind the scenes photos of construction sites and labor camps.