Jeddah was my entry level to the Saudi artwork scene. I started travelling there from Dubai in 2017 for 21’39 Jeddah Arts, an annual non-profit exhibition pushed by non-public patronage and the curiosity of worldwide visitor curators, similar to Venetia Porter and Vassilis Oikonomopoulos. Then, there was a palpable sense of discovery and a uncooked, experimental tone that thrived on the sides of a still-forming scene. Now, with the appearance of main institutional moments just like the Islamic Arts Biennale (IAB), which had its inaugural version in 2023, Jeddah is being drawn into the nationwide grandeur that more and more characterizes the mainstream Saudi artwork scene.
IAB represents a turning level within the metropolis’s trajectory. Organized by the Diriyah Biennale Basis and sited on the repurposed Western Hajj Terminal – an area deeply embedded within the symbolic geography of pilgrimage because the closest main airport to Mecca – the biennial embodies Saudi Arabia’s push to outline cultural narratives grounded in heritage whereas stepping onto the worldwide artwork stage. The result’s a stress between conventional sacred kinds and modern interpretations.
Anchoring itself in reverence for classical Islamic epistemologies, IAB’s second version, ‘And all that’s in between’ – co-curated by a staff of 12 below the inventive course of Abdul Rahman Azzam, Amin Jaffer and Julian Raby – leans closely on a museological method. Greater than 500 early Islamic objects are displayed throughout the 70,000-square-metre house, designed by OMA, marking a shift from the primary version, curated by London-based architect Sumayya Vally, whose dynamic, site-responsive commissions led the dialog.
One among six thematic sections, AlMadar (The Orbit) showcases a bewildering array of astrolabes, manuscripts and maps from 34 establishments, together with libraries in Indonesia and the Vatican. The sheer density of fabric speaks to an mental golden age that flowed freely throughout Islamic civilization. But, the show additionally reinscribes historic hierarchies, with documentations of male genius in arithmetic, commerce, warfare and navigation. European translations of Baghdad scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s algebraic formulations and Fibonacci’s 14th-century Liber Abaci (E book of Calculation) take centre stage, whereas uncommon examples of girls’s work – just like the scribe Fadl’s Tenth-century Quran in Kufic calligraphy – line the again partitions in marginal shows.
This stress between ‘main’ and ‘minor’ narratives can also be felt in AlMuqtani (The Homage), the place opulent Indo-Islamic objects from the Al Thani Assortment sit beside the Furusiyya Artwork Basis’s assortment of Islamic weaponry. Right here, aesthetic richness (as within the Seventeenth-century, jewel-encrusted rosewater sprinkler for celebrations) aligns with historic energy, evidenced in warfare masks and armour. But, as Assistant Minister of Tradition Rakan Altouq admitted throughout his opening speech, ‘Islamic artwork has been vulnerable to mummification and preservation for preservation’s sake.’ This self-awareness displays a broader institutional anxiousness: honour the previous with out mothballing it.
There have been makes an attempt to do that in AlBidayah (The Starting), the place the Kiswah – the black-and-gold material that drapes the Kaaba (the cube-shaped shrine on the centre of Mecca’s Grand Mosque) – is displayed suspended in mid-air, like a sacred curtain. It’s a transferring sight, made extra so by its unfamiliar presentation; Muslims hardly ever see it like this, because it’s historically reduce and changed yearly. One other haunting piece on this part is the metallic casing for the Black Stone, regarded as a meteorite that fell whereas the Prophet Ibrahim was constructing the Kaaba. Marking the start line of circumambulation, it’s typically held and kissed. Right here it’s seen not in fullness however as damaging house. This absence is quietly highly effective, extra evocative than a few of the extra literal shows of religious objects.
Nonetheless, it’s the modern out of doors part, curated by Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, that breathes life right into a biennale dominated by vitrines of artifacts. Drawing on the exhibition’s open-ended title – a phrase that repeats all through the Qur’an – Shono chooses to deal with the ‘in-between’ with a presentation of works that look to formless, fragile house slightly than the binaries of celestial imagining.
Right here, the works are lighter, not in substance however in feeling. Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser’s An Omniscience: The Sanctuary (2025) creates a mild soundscape the place radiation-absorbing vegetation develop below indigo shades that chart the flights of birds and planes – a refuge disrupted often by actual planes overhead. Ala Younis’s Minimize Flowers (2025) is a greenhouse set up tenderly indexing the collapse of Gaza’s flower commerce, providing grief within the guise of light cultivation.
Saudi artists new to the biennial circuit additionally shine. Anhar Salem’s Media Fountain (2025) subverts conventional mosaic design by means of a matrix of digital avatars cloaked in Islamic tropes, whereas Tamara Kalo’s digicam obscura sculpture The Optics of a Rising Solar (2025) live-streams an inverted sky, a intelligent nod to Ibn al Haytham’s Eleventh-century discovery of optics and a Qur’anic verse about mild being neither japanese nor western.
Nonetheless, the fracture between previous and current feels unresolved, with extra nonetheless to be performed to attach the present’s deal with Islam’s far-reaching historic impression and its plurality of cultures and craft with the extra located current of Saudi modern artists. In a quickly liberalizing nation, the place artwork should now mediate each religious continuity and international visibility, the biennial has but to search out equilibrium. Maybe probably the most poignant articulation of this stress comes not inside IAB itself however at the close by ATHR Gallery.
There, Dubai-based Rami Farook’s exhibition ‘A Muslim Man’ gives a delicate, but radical counterpoint. Collating intimate work, self-portraits, ChatGPT screenshots and pictures mined from the web, Farook explores masculinity by means of the lens of religion and vulnerability. The present is each self-reflexive and looking – open in its contradictions but sentimental. The place IAB typically feels burdened by institutional weight and ambition, ‘A Muslim Man’ is religious with out spectacle. It jogged my memory, gently, that sacredness is not sealed behind glass. It lives within the quiet aura of the on a regular basis, like Farook’s {photograph} of a person in prayer (coronary heart socks & sujood, 2023) – a picture that claims the whole lot in regards to the materials traces of devotion.
The Islamic Arts Biennale 2025 is on view at Western Hajj Terminal till 25 Might
Important picture: The Islamic Arts Biennale 2025, set up view. Courtesy: Diriyah Biennale Basis; {photograph}: Marco Cappelletti
