All you need to know about Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024

Even before stepping foot into the sprawling exhibition halls of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024, visitors are greeted by the captivating sight of Diriyah, the historic mud-brick oasis nicknamed the 'City of the Earth.' A short, scenic drive northwest of Riyadh, Diriyah boasts a rich past as the birthplace of the Saudi royal family and the very cradle of Saudi Arabia's cultural identity. Aptly then, this year's biennale, titled 'After Rain', shines a spotlight not only on contemporary art from the Gulf region but also on its illustrious history.

Many of the showcased works echo regional traditional practices of the Arabian Peninsula, further weaving a connection between past and present — and perhaps, guide us to a future full of "dreams and play," as curator Ute Meta Bauer notes hopefully in her curatorial statement for 'After Rain'.

The JAX District, once a disused industrial quarter, has now been reimagined as an arts hub and serves as the main site for the second edition of the biennale. Given the endless miles of sun-kissed desert that surround Diriyah (which itself lies between the seasonal riverbed of Wadi Hanifah and the UNESCO World Heritage Site At-Turaif), it is a fitting location to consider the significance of water, rain, food, shelter and sustainability, which are the central themes of this biennale. Curator Ute Meta Bauer invokes a more evocative term, petrichor (an earthy and intense smell after the first downpour) that feels both local and exotic in the context of the arid Arabian landscape.

The works of 177 artists from over 40 countries are displayed in the six large halls of JAX District, along with one offsite locale and seeing all of them together is once again a powerful reminder that the world needs solutions to some of the most pressing ecological issues of the 21st century. During a guided tour conducted by mostly female co-curators working under Bauer, we encounter art that spans the entire gamut of styles, mediums and influences. To fully appreciate the finer nuances of a biennale, it is important to delve into the individual practices of artists and consider them in light of the event's overarching message. In this, the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024 ticks all the boxes.

One of the first works to greet us conveys climate anxieties and examines whether architecture and nature can coexist peacefully. Marjetica Potrč's Acre Palafita with 'Infrastructure' is a striking recreation of the palafita, or stilt house, commonly found across South America. Anyone who has ever seen one of Potrč's humble dwellings brought alive in gallery and museum spaces will know that here's an artist whose pioneering body of work is deeply rooted in her concern for the built environment, indigenous knowledge systems and the resilience of the local communities. Best known for using natural materials to give her installations a three-dimensional, real-world physical appearance, Potrč has created the gigantic palafita with solar panels and a satellite dish at Diriyah. On a wall nearby, she has incorporated imagery from Slovenian folk art. Thanks to their innovations, adaptability and climate-responsive features, it appears that vernacular architects can help us build a more sustainable future.

Similarly, British photographer James Morris' series Butabu (a term borrowed from the Batammaliba language of Togo and Benin in West Africa which means 'wetting the Earth before building') reflects on the wealth of African architecture and how master builders of the ancient era had offered us sophisticated aesthetics and architectural solutions long before the phrase 'global warming' entered our lexicon.

In the same hall, the Dutch-Filipino artist Martha Atienza's Equation of State takes up the cause of Bantayan Island's vanishing coastline. As someone living in Bantayan, she has observed the destructive forces of climate change at close quarters. Her installation plonks the breathing lungs of the region's mangroves into the exhibition space, which brings a sense of urgency to the matter as it goes on to highlight the effects of rising sea levels and urbanisation that have impacted not only the island's geography but also the local communities. As one intriguing work elsewhere reminds us, "Before there was land, there were mangroves."

Tiffany Chung's cartographic works engage more directly with the human cost of environmental migration. Standing beside her maps, the Vietnamese-American artist tells wknd., "As economic interest plays a crucial role in shaping geopolitics in many parts of the world, these two works aim to demonstrate the intertwinement of armed conflicts, development, climate-related disasters, displacement and forced migration." Next, we talk about her background and the incredibly long, data-driven titles she has bestowed on her artworks, which are both extremely singular and unabashedly convoluted. Her family, we learn, survived the devastating 1978 flood in a 'New Economic Zone' of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. "The experience was twofold," she says. "Being displaced and surviving a weather-related disaster. Many of such events coupled with other failed economic and socio-political implementations by the new communist regime drove Vietnamese to flee the country between 1975 and 1997."

At par with their Western counterparts, compelling voices from the Gulf supply their own set of distinctive images to the biennale, adding to the astonishing diversity, complexity and multifaceted splendour of the 'global project.' According to curator Ute Meta Bauer, it would have been impossible to imagine Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale without inputs from local contributors. "One can't acknowledge the regional artists enough because they are such an important part of the fabric of this land. You can see that we have focussed on the transgenerational, from veteran names like Abdulrahman Alsoliman and Hassan Sharif to younger voices such as Alia Farid, Ahmed Mater, Reem Al Nasser and Sara Abdu. They all have such unique perspectives about the world," says Bauer, adding that the Gulf's true cultural heritage resides, among others, in its language. "I became aware of the beauty of Arabic when we were doing translations of the titles. There are so many different — and really poetic — ways of saying the same thing and yet, all are relevant in their own way. I wish I could speak Arabic and delve deeper into its intricacies. Language, after all, is the soul of any nation or civilization."

The biennale proudly features a wide array of Arabic artists, including many critically acclaimed women who are pushing boundaries and making bold statements through their work. For example, in a series of 39 photogravure prints, Jeddah-based artist and teacher Safeya Binzagr lifts the veil to reveal the silken richness of Saudi Arabia's various tribes. Looking at the traditional costumes of Arabic women is a refreshing change in the mass-produced age of Zara and Nike.

Not far, the Amman-based Hind Nasser's desert-scapes are a vision built purely on spiritual principles and lyrical abstraction while Nabila Al Bassam's selected works nods to Saudi Arabian landscapes. Abdulrahman Alsoliman's black ink palm trees speak of war just as much as they do of love and peace. By contrast, the late UAE conceptual art luminary Hassan Sharif drew attention to his radical experimentations with small-scale works. Following the Constructivist aesthetic, Sharif's series is playful and avant-garde. Interestingly, for one of the artworks, this founding member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society and of the Art Atelier in the Youth Theatre and Arts in Dubai threw rocks into the desert landscape, perhaps to underscore nature's role in art-making and the performance art aspect of the human body itself. Of the younger lot from the Middle East, more than a few stand out. Alia Ahmad's Alwasm (2023) is an ode to the Najd region of her native Riyadh while her fellow national Reem Al Nasser gathers discarded branches of arar tree from the mountainous Aseer province in Blue Windows (2022) to convey a sense of loss and mourning. Kuwait-based Alia Farid's large-scale sculptures of water fountains and vessels glow in the darkly lit room, echoing the concept of 'sabeel,' the holy water Zamzam, the martyrdom of Imam Husain and more importantly, the significance of water in Islamic mythology. Elsewhere, the young Sara Abdu attempts to capture the divine dance between inner and outer world in the autobiographical, poetically-titled Now That I've Lost You in My Dreams, Where Do We Meet?

Among the more impressive collateral offerings at the biennale are a daily film programme in a purpose-built Black Box that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction and a research-based platform titled 'The Learning Garden'. At the biennale, besides all the artistic delight, visitors can watch a film, explore digital archives or simply while away time smelling the flora and fauna of Arab lands in a segment catering to sensory-based displays.

Tara Aldughaither, whose collaborative project with Joe Namy traces the rhythms, sounds and music of Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, describes the biennale as the Olympics. The Saudi artist, who's also the founder of Sawtasura (Arabic for 'voice of the image'), a crowdsourcing platform dedicated to women's folk music and oral histories of the Arabian Peninsula, says, "It brings together the best of the best and I'm extremely humbled to play a small role amongst the legends whose work is being shown here in my ancestral home." Aldughaither (33) is one of the many talented Arab artists whose work transcends preconceived notions about the Kingdom previously known for its cultural conservatism. Having a childhood in Khobar in the '90s where she was only exposed to live music during wedding festivities, she belongs to a generation who's witnessing her country undergoing a massive social, cultural and economic shift under the reformist leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the ambitious 'Saudi Vision 2030' blueprint that the 38-year-old Prime Minister has rolled out keeping in mind that 63 per cent of Saudis are under 30 years of age.

Considering that the inaugural edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale kicked off with only 60 artists in 2021-22, the growth has been nothing less than exponential this time round. Aldughaither explains that Diriyah is rapidly setting a gold standard for contemporary art in the Kingdom, "not only because it follows an age-old lineage and format of exhibition making but also because it manifests in a time and place where the desire to express is met with a vital energy and desire of artists who grew up here to showcase our practice and work. This is especially true for women." Apart from the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, Hayy Jameel and Misk Art Institute are some of the most exciting platforms in Saudi that are supporting the emergence of new-age artistic practices in the right way. Misk Art Institute, incidentally, is the cultural arm of the Crown Prince's philanthropic Misk Foundation and reportedly, it's doing a terrific job of empowering art and artists. If MBS' vision pays off, then the Land of the Two Holy Mosques can very soon well become the Land of Many Art Hubs, Biennales, Museums and Institutions — truly, a Mecca for art lovers.

(Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024 runs until May 24)

wknd@khaleejtimes.com

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