Secteur Privé Reimagines How We Live with Art
Ayman Daouk and Colette Gibson’s annual exhibitions blur the boundaries between gallery and home, inspiring guests to experience art and design within the flow of life
Secteur Privé began in 2018 as an intimate experiment in how art and design might coexist within a lived space. For founder Ayman Daouk, it started quite literally at home, transforming his own residence into a place where paintings, objects and design pieces harmonized with everyday life. A passionate collector drawn to the language of form and craftsmanship, Daouk cultivated close relationships with artists and designers, including longtime collaborator Mark Brazier-Jones. His home soon became a quiet epicenter during Frieze week, hosting private viewings for internationally acclaimed artists such as Sasha Okun and Maria Kreyn.
As these creative exchanges deepened, the idea of shaping a dedicated platform took hold. Together with his life and business partner Colette Gibson, Daouk evolved Secteur Privé into a gallery program that remained faithful to the intimacy of its beginnings. Officially launched in 2023, the duo built a modest but resonant program, staging exhibitions that unfolded like domestic encounters. Rather than isolating artworks in sterile settings, Secteur Privé invited guests to experience them within the flow of life, to sense how a painting might hang beside a sculptural chair or how light could transform an object’s emotional presence.
“From the beginning, Secteur Privé was never meant to be a gallery in the traditional sense. It grew out of a desire to live with art, to feel how creativity transforms a space and, in turn, how that space shapes the way we see and connect with objects,” says Daouk. “For me, collecting is an act of emotion and dialogue, a way to bring beauty into rhythm with everyday life.”
What emerged was a curatorial philosophy Daouk and Gibson call “interiorism,” the belief that living spaces themselves can be conceived as works of art. This ethos comes to life each October during PAD and Frieze London, when Secteur Privé presents its annual exhibition. Paintings and objects are arranged in thoughtful constellations, bringing together emerging voices and collectible design icons in ways that dissolve the boundaries between gallery and home.
Their 2024 exhibition, Éclatant!, exemplified this approach. Pairing Stacie McCormick’s contemplative canvases with the sculptural furniture and chandeliers of Mark Brazier-Jones, the show illuminated the dialogue between reflection and radiance. It marked a pivotal moment for the gallery, one that firmly positioned Secteur Privé as a distinctive voice at the intersection of contemporary art and design.
For me, collecting is an act of emotion and dialogue, a way to bring beauty into rhythm with everyday life.
Ayman Daouk
By 2025, the gallery’s ambitions had expanded beyond London. Secteur Privé participated in the San Francisco Art Fair and CAN Art Fair, while also strengthening its presence in the Middle East through collaborations with Karimah Hassan, whose powerful works explore hope and generational trauma. The gallery’s growing artist residency program, launched with Hassan in Beirut and Koak in London, will soon extend to Los Angeles and Italy, furthering its mission to cultivate global creative exchange.
At its heart, Secteur Privé remains a living environment set within a Grade II listed Marylebone building, where art and design exist not as separate categories but as parts of a shared and evolving dialogue. For Daouk and Gibson, the gallery is as much about community and connection as it is about aesthetics. Their vision redefines the collector’s experience, turning the act of collecting into a way of living with intention and imagination.
“Our intention has always been to create an environment where art and design feel approachable, human and alive,” Gibson says. “Each exhibition is like entering a conversation between artists, materials and light. It is less about presentation and more about experience, about how people move through the space, what they feel and what stays with them after they leave.”
This 15 October, Secteur Privé unveiled Fragment of Elsewhere, coinciding with Frieze’s VIP opening day. The group exhibition embodies the gallery’s philosophy, bringing together Júlia Martins Miranda’s gestural landscapes with the radical glasswork of Danny Lane, whose engineered precision conveys sculptural poise. Returning artists Stacie McCormick and Mark Brazier-Jones join once again, while a rare Gabriella Crespi puzzle table anchors the installation, radiating timeless glamour and reminding visitors that great design can be as transcendent as it is functional.
In every detail, Secteur Privé remains devoted to its founding idea: that the true home of art is not on the wall alone, but in the way we live with it.
What are your thoughts?