Focused primarily on painting - alongside works on paper, ceramics, and photography — the platform collaborates directly with artists across geographies to produce focused, intentional presentations of new work, drawn straight from the studio.

Each project is developed in close collaboration with artists and accompanied by commissioned texts, video content, and studio documentation, offering audiences deeper insight into an artist’s practice and process. Works are shipped directly from the artist’s studio to the collector, reducing the logistical and environmental costs of traditional exhibition models.

Operating as an extension of Taymour Grahne Projects, Cactus Moon Studio builds on the gallery’s decade-plus of work exhibiting artists at significant moments of their careers - including GaHee Park, Dominique Fung, Hassan Hajjaj, Nadia Ayari, Maia Cruz Palileo, John Dilg, Mohamed Melehi, Tidawhitney Lek, Francesca Mollett, Aubrey Levinthal, Daniele Genadry, and Roudhah Al Mazrouei - many of whom have gone on to significant international recognition.

Through a flexible and responsive format, Cactus Moon Studio presents an ongoing programme of exhibitions throughout the year, with new presentations released twice a month. Balancing focused solo exhibitions with thematic group presentations, the platform creates opportunities for sustained engagement with artists’ practices while fostering dialogue across different generations, geographies, and approaches to contemporary image-making.

By prioritising thoughtful curation, close collaboration, and direct access to the studio, Cactus Moon Studio offers collectors and audiences an opportunity to encounter compelling new work within a focused and context-rich framework.

The name draws from the moon cactus — a vivid, hybrid plant that exists somewhere between the natural and the surreal — reflecting the platform’s spirit of creative experimentation and discovery.

Taymour Grahne is a London- and Dubai-based art dealer and the founder of Cactus Moon Studio, as well as Taymour Grahne Projects, a contemporary art gallery established in 2013. Known for identifying and championing significant artistic voices, Grahne has built a programme spanning exhibitions, art fairs, and online presentations, focused on painting and artists working across and between the Global South and the West.

Born in London to a Lebanese mother and Finnish father, Grahne was raised between London, Beirut, and New York. This transnational upbringing has been central to the gallery’s identity, shaping a programme that engages with layered geographies, diasporic histories, and shifting cultural contexts. His involvement with the art world began during his studies in International Relations at Boston University, where he founded Art of the Mid East, an online platform dedicated to bringing greater visibility to artistic practices from across the Middle East.

After completing an MA in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York, Grahne opened the gallery at 157 Hudson Street in New York City’s Tribeca neighbourhood. The space — formerly home to the iconic Area nightclub, associated with figures such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat — marked the beginning of a programme defined by close collaboration with some of the most significant artists working today. The gallery later operated spaces in London before establishing its current flagship at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai in 2025, presenting artists from across geographies, including those rooted in the Middle East and North Africa and their diasporas.

Through his programme, Grahne has placed works into major international museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Barjeel Art Foundation, Dalloul Art Foundation, Nasher Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, MACAAL, and X Museum. The gallery’s programme and artists have been widely featured in leading international publications including The New York Times, Frieze, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, and The Observer.

Grahne has spoken at institutions including Wellesley College, Kingston University, and Regent’s University, and continues to develop new models for presenting and engaging with artists beyond traditional exhibition formats.