The first ever Islamic Arts biennale will be held in Jeddah this year in the iconic Hajj Terminal. The plans in work are to create a 70,000 m2 venue that will include all of the facilities needed for an exhibition space, including a theater, workshops, classrooms, and a mosque. The dates of the event will be from January 23rd to April 23rd, 2023.
The team of curators behind the event will include famed, prestigious names such as Dr. Omniya Abdel Barr, Sumayya Vally, Dr. Saad Alrashid, and Dr. Julian Raby. This stellar team as created a sensory experience like no other featuring both the fusion of contemporary art pieces that give a nod to preset-day trends, along with historical artifacts that tell the story of a thousand of years ago.
Farida Alhusseini, The Islamic Arts Biennale Director, was looking forward to the impact this event will have on the fuure of Islamic Arts as a discourse. She states ot local news, “By bridging craftsmanship and academia with continuing practices of artistry and creativity we hope that this edition, and future editions to come, will create space for new perspectives to be voiced and unexpected connections to inspire and generate meaning.”
As for the artists that were selected to have their work showcased at the Biennale, Sumayya Valley, one of the event’s curators spoke to a local news source about the process, “The selected artists have been chosen for their methods of practice — grounded in the embodied, the aural, collectivity, and the spiritual … I am honored to be working with an incredible constellation of artists, each of whom I believe will contribute meaningfully to this discourse of Islamic art. These artists reflect deeply on the generativity of our contexts and practices for the present and future.”
The contributing artists are more than 40 creatives spanning from different artistic background, and the names include renowned Reem Al Faisal, Haroon Mirza, Dima Srouji, Beya Othmani, Noura Al Sayeh, Nora Alissa, Sarah Brahim, Lubna Chowdary, Huda Lutfi, and more.
