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Artscoops Launches A Digital Market For MENA Artworks

May and Raya Mamarbachi have just made a scoop in the MENA art world by launching an online platform specialized in the buying and selling of regional art. Artscoops.com is a platform where you can purchase contemporary and modern artworks directly from artists and commercial galleries. Sabhan Adam (Syria) and Mohammad El Rawas (Lebanon) are part of the growing portfolio of more than 80 pieces that are already available online. No need to be a specialist to understand the huge potential of Artscoops’s market. Over the past two decades, the MENA participation in the international art world has boomed: producing, buying, and showing. Raya Mamarbachi witnessed first-hand the growth of Qatar into a major market maker, spending 25% of the region’s $11 billion art market (a figure set to triple by 2015 according to the NYT, “An Emirate Filling Up With Artwork”). MENA artists are some of its favorites. Creators from the Arab region in particular are everywhere today. They started by colonizing leading public museum and private collections, major institutions, biennials, art fairs, large-scale shows and coveted awards. The MENA region is now equipped with an impressive cultural infrastructure. The most visible part of the process is the emergence of star museums and art fairs across the Gulf.  One dimension was still missing to achieve this unrelenting expansion: Artscoops provides Arab artworks with its own digital platform. Being a collector does not require you to fly around the globe or rank amongst the friends and families of glittering art fairs anymore. Artscoops makes it possible for any online user - local, regional and international - to discover the art production of the MENA region and become a collector. Artscoops is actually a double channel platform dedicated to both collectors and amateurs. Whether you are a collector or just getting started, you can learn, develop your own expertise, browse, buy or bid on artworks from both renowned and emerging artists on the platform. To fulfill its educational agenda Artscoops will provide its audience with original recommendations and content assembled by a team of local curators and art advisors, delivered on the website and through mobile applications. “It is about experiencing art”, asserts Raya Mamarbachi, CEO. May Mamarbachi, namely in charge of the relations with the artists and galleries, explains: “We believe in creating long-term value for our buyers, collectors and partners. We accomplish this by offering unique artworks accompanied by unbiased and independent information on the artwork and artist”. Artscoops’s technical agenda is potentially disruptive: a 24/7 platform that doesn’t limit its users by hours of operations or location, where they explore art and artists, and buy through a secure payment gateway – with a return and refund policy too. It seems that the job of “marchand d’art” has mutated. The first online auction is scheduled for the 10th of September in collaboration with Paddle8.com. We are used to male filiations for founding and perpetuating businesses. The Mamarbachi’s are mother and daughter, and business partners. May is an art consultant that represented The Victoria & Albert Museum (London) for The World Ceramics Show in Damascus (2008). She was recently part of Syri-Arts, a non-profit initiative inviting artists to donate a work of art to be auctioned by Paddle 8 to raise funds for Syrian children (Beirut Exhibition Center, 2013). Raya is a digital marketing executive with extensive experience in developing innovative technology platforms. She led the digital marketing departments at Publicis in Lebanon and DDB in Qatar, working on large accounts such as Qatari Diar and the Qatar Museum Authority. She has also held positions in both online and traditional marketing at global companies (Association of Executive Search Consultants in New York & Executivesontheweb.com in London). 

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