Art Dubai has unveiled a strong line-up for its sixth edition, mixing prestige players like Galerie Chantal Crousel, Galerie Perrotin, Marianne Boesky, Pace, and Pilar Corrias with feisty up-and-comers like Lombard-Freid Projects of New York and Beijing’s Platform China.

The last two names give a hint to the orientation of this edition of the fair, which will run in the emirate from March 21-24 next year: Art Dubai 2012 will be facing East. Platform China shows some of the hottest emerging names in Chinese contemporary art, while Lombard-Freid Projects has carved out an enviable niche nurturing talent from the so-called MENASA (Middle East/North Africa/South Asia) region, representing artists from Yokyakarta to Morocco, Beijing to Beirut. Both of these galleries, incidentally, were among the best exhibitors at this year’s Art HK — a fair  whose playbook Art Dubai has no doubt been studying.

But these are just two of a raft of galleries who will be representing Asia in Dubai. First there are regional tyros like experimenter of Kolkata and Chemould Prescott Road of Mumbai, and then there are the established international players that have scored a hit by opening Asian branches — Pace Gallery (of New York, Beijing, and London), Galeria Continua (of San Gimignano, Beijing, and Le Moulin), and Artside (of Beijing and Seoul.)

And it is not only the galleries closely associated with Asian contemporary art that will be showing off their oriental chops in Dubai. Paris’ Galerie Perrotin, for example, will be featuring Indian artist Bharti Kher, whom leading Chinese contemporary art collector Guy Ullens named recently as one of the artists at the top of his newly diversifying shopping list, and whom Hauser & Wirth showed to great success at Art HK this year, selling one of her works for $265,000 to a Beijing collector. 

In the official press release, Art Dubai director Antonia Carver says that the 2012 fair is “oversubscribed, and the gallery selection process was particularly tough.” She has weeded through the applicants to pick 74 galleries that she believes will allow a “diverse, curated, and intimate approach” to the event.

Carver has reason to be pleased with how Art Dubai has been tracking since she took the helm in 2010. In tandem with the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, the event has already achieved cred for the Gulf state among key art world players. American Chinese collector Richard Chang recently named Art Dubai as one of the handful of fairs he will make time for in the coming year, and the fact that galleries like Marianne Boesky and Chantal Crousel will be repeat exhibitors next year speaks for itself.

Meanwhile, Carver has shown an eye for the coming thing in choosing Indonesia for the curated Marker section of the fair. Launched last year, Marker is envisaged as a curated cluster of “concept stands,” which next year will show work from five Indonesian galleries selected and directed by Yogyakarta-born curator Alia Swastika.

This focus on Indonesia comes on the heels of a series of events that have elevated interest in the nation’s contemporary art scene over the last year. These include the major survey shows at Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris and Saatchi Gallery in London; the well-curated sampling of the country’s contemporary art in the  “Art Domain Migration” section of the Guangzhou Triennale; and the booming auction prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s Hong Kong.

Art Dubai will run March 21-24 at Madinat Jumeirah, UAE. For a taste of the fair view our slideshow.