The Islamic Arts Biennale Anchors Itself in the Past

Jeddah was my entry point to the Saudi art scene. I began travelling there from Dubai in 2017 for 21’39 Jeddah Arts, an annual non-profit exhibition driven by private patronage and the curiosity of international guest curators, such as Venetia Porter and Vassilis Oikonomopoulos. Then, there was a palpable sense of discovery and a raw, experimental tone that thrived on the edges of a still-forming scene. Now, with the advent of major institutional moments like the Islamic Arts Biennale (IAB), which had its inaugural edition in 2023, Jeddah is being drawn into the national grandeur that increasingly characterizes the mainstream Saudi art scene.

IAB represents a turning point in the city’s trajectory. Organized by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation and sited at the repurposed Western Hajj Terminal – a space deeply embedded in the symbolic geography of pilgrimage as the closest major airport to Mecca – the biennial embodies Saudi Arabia’s push to define cultural narratives grounded in heritage while stepping onto the global art stage. The result is a tension between traditional sacred forms and contemporary interpretations.

Anchoring itself in reverence for classical Islamic epistemologies, IAB’s second edition, ‘And all that is in between’ – co-curated by a team of 12 under the artistic direction of Abdul Rahman Azzam, Amin Jaffer and Julian Raby – leans heavily on a museological approach. More than 500 early Islamic objects are displayed across the 70,000-square-metre space, designed by OMA, marking a shift from the first edition, curated by London-based architect Sumayya Vally, whose dynamic, site-responsive commissions led the conversation.

One of six thematic sections, AlMadar (The Orbit) showcases a bewildering array of astrolabes, manuscripts and maps from 34 institutions, including libraries in Indonesia and the Vatican. The sheer density of material speaks to an intellectual golden age that flowed freely across Islamic civilization. Yet, the display also reinscribes historical hierarchies, with documentations of male genius in mathematics, commerce, warfare and navigation. European translations of Baghdad scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s algebraic formulations and Fibonacci’s 14th-century Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation) take centre stage, while rare examples of women’s work – like the scribe Fadl’s 10th-century Quran in Kufic calligraphy – line the back walls in marginal displays.

This tension between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ narratives is also felt in AlMuqtani (The Homage), where opulent Indo-Islamic objects from the Al Thani Collection sit beside the Furusiyya Art Foundation’s collection of Islamic weaponry. Here, aesthetic richness (as in the 17th-century, jewel-encrusted rosewater sprinkler for celebrations) aligns with historical power, evidenced in war masks and armour. Yet, as Assistant Minister of Culture Rakan Altouq admitted during his opening speech, ‘Islamic art has been at risk of mummification and preservation for preservation’s sake.’ This self-awareness reflects a broader institutional anxiety: how to honour the past without mothballing it.

There were attempts to do this in AlBidayah (The Beginning), where the Kiswah – the black-and-gold cloth that drapes the Kaaba (the cube-shaped shrine at the centre of Mecca’s Grand Mosque) – is displayed suspended in mid-air, like a sacred curtain. It’s a moving sight, made more so by its unfamiliar presentation; Muslims rarely see it like this, since it’s traditionally cut and replaced yearly. Another haunting piece in this section is the metallic casing for the Black Stone, thought to be a meteorite that fell while the Prophet Ibrahim was building the Kaaba. Marking the starting point of circumambulation, it is often held and kissed. Here it is seen not in fullness but as negative space. This absence is quietly powerful, more evocative than some of the more literal displays of spiritual objects.

Still, it is the contemporary outdoor section, curated by Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, that breathes life into a biennale dominated by vitrines of artifacts. Drawing on the exhibition’s open-ended title – a phrase that repeats throughout the Qur’an – Shono chooses to focus on the ‘in-between’ with a presentation of works that look to formless, fragile space rather than the binaries of celestial imagining.

Here, the works are lighter, not in substance but in feeling. Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser’s An Omniscience: The Sanctuary (2025) creates a gentle soundscape where radiation-absorbing plants grow under indigo shades that chart the flights of birds and planes – a refuge disrupted occasionally by real planes overhead. Ala Younis’s Cut Flowers (2025) is a greenhouse installation tenderly indexing the collapse of Gaza’s flower trade, offering grief in the guise of gentle cultivation.

Saudi artists new to the biennial circuit also shine. Anhar Salem’s Media Fountain (2025) subverts traditional mosaic design through a matrix of digital avatars cloaked in Islamic tropes, while Tamara Kalo’s camera obscura sculpture The Optics of a Rising Sun (2025) live-streams an inverted sky, a clever nod to Ibn al Haytham’s 11th-century discovery of optics and a Qur’anic verse about light being neither eastern nor western.

Nonetheless, the fracture between past and present feels unresolved, with more still to be done to connect the show’s focus on Islam’s far-reaching historical impact and its plurality of cultures and craft with the more situated present of Saudi contemporary artists. In a rapidly liberalizing country, where art must now mediate both spiritual continuity and global visibility, the biennial has yet to find equilibrium. Perhaps the most poignant articulation of this tension comes not within IAB itself but at the nearby ATHR Gallery.

There, Dubai-based Rami Farook’s exhibition ‘A Muslim Man’ offers a soft, yet radical counterpoint. Collating intimate paintings, self-portraits, ChatGPT screenshots and photos mined from the internet, Farook explores masculinity through the lens of faith and vulnerability. The show is both self-reflexive and searching – open in its contradictions yet sentimental. Where IAB often feels burdened by institutional weight and ambition, ‘A Muslim Man’ is spiritual without spectacle. It reminded me, gently, that sacredness isn't sealed behind glass. It lives in the quiet aura of the everyday, like Farook’s photograph of a man in prayer (heart socks & sujood, 2023) – an image that says everything about the material traces of devotion.

The Islamic Arts Biennale 2025 is on view at Western Hajj Terminal until 25 May

_{Main image: The Islamic Arts Biennale 2025, installation view. Courtesy: Diriyah Biennale Foundation; photograph: Marco Cappelletti}