2023 ISLAMIC ARTS BIENNALE
Western Hajj Terminal
King Abdulaziz International Airport
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
January 23 — May 23, 2023
The 2023 edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale brought together an eclectic mix of artefacts and contemporary works and installations. The scenography was developed by OMA together with the curatorial team of Dr Omniya Abdel Barr, Dr Saad Al Rashid, Dr Julian Raby, led by artistic direcor Sumayya Vally.
The collections were divided over an indoor scenography in four large newly built galleries, and an outdoor desert landscape under the 1970s SOM-designed canopies of the western Hajj Terminal.
The theme of the indoor exhibition was Qiblah, the orientation towards Makkah, starting in a darkened space displaying a rare multi-layered astrolabe, and ending with the first Saudi-made door of the Ka’bah in a brightly lit space.
The theme for the outdoors exhibition was Hirjah, the journey of the prophet from Makkah to Madinah. The stern square pattern of the SOM canopy structure was complemented with a play of shorter and taller wall sections that structured the artworks and installations, gave them a background, defined space and orientation, and guided the visitor’s path for discovery. Two additional pavilions in the landscape showcased rarely seen artifacts from Makkah and Madinah.
AlMadar, the fifth gallery space, displayed items from twelve collaborating national and international institutions. It also paid tribute to the Hajj Terminal, that celebrated its 40th anniversary.
The Space Factory assisted the curatorial, scenographic and production teams at the interface of artistic ambitions and technical realisation. The first part of the work concerned coordination with the architects and engineers of the gallery buildings, then under construction, to assure that OMA’s scenographic design would work within the capacities and methodologies of the structure and infrastructure of the gallery buildings. This led to the design and layout of the rigging and equipment plans that were executed under the auspicos of Black Engineering and their technical teams responsible for the production of the Biennale.
The second part concerned the materiality of the scenography: the entire indoor path was guided by a quasi-continuous sequence of curtains made of non-woven fabrics, mostly felt and special paper, suspended in large sheets from several hundreds of meters of truss.
For the development of the outdoor exhibition under some 42 canopies of the former north-west terminal, an independent network of power and data was woven through the OMA-designed semi-permanent landscape of wall structures and soccles. These networks served specifically designed lighting troughs that embraced the listed columns of the SOM canopies, and strategically placed niches and pits that discretely support the art works and installations throughout the landscape.
The lighting troughs, co-designed with Les Éclaireurs, provided a plethora of mounting positions for uplighting of the canopies, to specially focused lighting of the artworks, to video projection, loudspeakers, banners, etc.
More information about the content of the exhibitions can be found on the websites of the Diriyah Biennale and OMA.
Client — Diriyah Biennale Foundation, Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture
Scenographer — OMA/Iyad Alsaka, Kaveh Dabiri, Saskia Simon
Architects gallery buildings — Giò Forma
Scenography technical design — The Space Factory
Lighting design — Les Éclaireurs
Production — Black Engineering
Images 1, 3, 4, 5 courtesy OMA/Marco Cappelletti
