A biennial of art But Islamic art. The first. As a starting point, it may raise eyebrows. What is shown there? Sumptuous geometries and beautiful calligraphy? What is Islamic art today? What does it explain, what does it propose? Old familiar images of a great culture? Faith? Although, after all, the great Western art, has not for centuries been Christian art, paid for directly by the Church? The answer, the surprise, forceful, comes after a unique journey by plane from Madrid to Jiddah, in Saudi Arabia, together with numerous pilgrims to Mecca who move in full flight in the white clothes they have to wear on his way to the holy city. A flight that is, in a way, one of the many answers to the question of what Islamic art is or can be today in a religion in which aniconism has reigned, the prohibition of representing images of living beings. In addition to representing an exercise of empowerment in a world in which the measure of all things is no longer the West.
Because the curator of the first Biennale of Islamic Art, the South African architect Sumayya Vally – one of the Young Global Leaders of 2022 according to the World Economic Forum and leader of the Counterspace study – has opened a powerful path for the his biennial, which is not unique: Islamic art according to the proposal that he stubbornly -reveals- has defended, is not geometric borders or beautiful letters in black ink, or not only, but everything that has to do with the experience of belonging in Islam The experience of community, of prayer, of pilgrimage, of the inner and outer journey that unites believers, no matter which country they end up emigrating to. An experience that just materializes in many ways, especially in works that, by their appearance, could be in any major global biennale of contemporary art, Islamic or agnostic.
Rows of megaphones, video creations, almost mystical light experiences, powerful installations with hundreds of black petri cubes and others where musical notes become large three-dimensional wooden ovoids suspended by cables many meters high as if they were a sheet music
Only in Jiddah, the second city of Saudi Arabia, on the Red Sea, a port of entry for more than a millennium for pilgrims from all over the world, and in whose old quarter you can see wooden palm trees of Indian origin like the columns of the mosques, those works acquire a different global meaning than if they hung in the biennales of Venice or São Paulo. Together they talk about the title of the Biennale, The first house, the Kaba, to build belonging. They play with the call to prayer, their psalmody, with the pilgrims' caps, suspended by the hundreds, with the prayer rugs, here in bright colors and glittering fabrics. With the daily experience of the Muslim world.
"For a long time the world has not been made in our image, it has been given to us from somewhere else, we only saw a world explained from the mainstream", reflects Vally, who remembers that the field of 'called Islamic art was defined by Europeans in the 19th century. He remembers it from one of the brand-new buildings built for the biennial by the Saudi government's Diriya Foundation, which has clearly passed its time as an outcast after the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and not only hosts Joe Biden but is boarded in an enormous project of social change and repositioning of the country with biennials, museums, eco-technological cities 500 kilometers long such as Neom, Formula 1 and with a volume of construction that seems to leave the Spain of the nineties in its infancy. Without forgetting the accelerated rehabilitation of the entire historic center of Jiddah, a World Heritage Site and the only place where you can really walk in a city made for cars, and whose roads are presided over by immense shopping centers.
The buildings of the new biennial are located in front of the large pilgrims terminal of the Jiddah airport, where they are united by gigantic tents reminiscent of Expo 92 and under which, in the open air, numerous works of the artistic event for which the scenography was made by the OMA studio of Rem Koolhaas and where much of what is shown is new work, with artists such as Idris Khan, Wael Shawky, Joe Namy, Basmah Felemban or Haroon Gunn -Salie, author of Among the men, a thousand plaster Kufi caps suspended under a large dome that remember the thousands who were in 1969 at the burial, after the beating death by the South African police, of anti-apartheid imam Abdullah Haron.
"I hope - remarks Vally - that this biennial opens a different definition for Islamic art. I wanted the art shown to be universal and to appeal to everyone, but not to limit what this art can be, I wanted to work with philosophies of faith showing that from them we can push creativity if we think from perspectives different. There are so many components of our tradition that are not written down, but are passed down from person to person, from generation to generation, orally, with performances, with rituals. They can offer different futures for creation and for a museum world that is in crisis everywhere and we need to challenge it from many perspectives. There are so many works waiting to be moved... This is one of them".
