A Reimagined Islamic Garden

Another homecoming for Islamic art

The return of the world’s first Islamic Arts Biennale once again traverses both historical and contemporary works of art, celebrating the various global influences that have shaped Islamic culture throughout history. The event is staged again by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, established in 2020 to put on the country’s first art biennales: the Contemporary Art Biennale and the present one catered to Islamic art. Their staging in alternate years represents the momentous investment in culture and heritage undertaken as part of the Kingdom’s ongoing transformation. 

This change, says Shono, couldn’t be captured better than in this edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale. “Nowhere is the change, in my opinion, more tangible, than in this biennale because it brings into conversation historical objects of the past and the narratives they carry into proximity and dialogue with contemporary thoughts and visual creations of the present,” he explains. 

That’s why the cross-cultural dialogue of art on show is crucial.

“As the Islamic Arts Biennale continues to evolve, we remain deeply committed to international collaboration and celebrating the rich diversity of artistic practices from across the globe,” says Wejdan Reda, interim director. “This year, with over 30 participating institutions, hailing from Tunis to Tashkent, and from Mali to Bali, and a diverse roster of over international 30 artists, the biennale stands as a testament to the global resonance of Islamic art.”

The exhibition, emphasizes Reda, “is not only a platform for showcasing art but also a place where connections between cultures are made, reaffirming the role of art as a bridge between geographies and cultures."

Until the Islamic Art Biennale debuted in 2023, Islamic art had rarely been given such an international showing, even in the Arab world. The World of Islam Festival in London in 1976 marked the last time a large-scale exhibition was staged for the genre. While the Islamic Art Biennale is the greatest and most comprehensive exhibition ever dedicated to historical and contemporary works of Islamic art, the event, while emphasizing its universality, is notably staged in the birthplace of Islam.

“The Islamic Arts Biennale is the only event of its time,” says Amin Jaffar, director of the Al Thani Collection in Paris and one of the biennale’s three artistic directors this year. “While there are museums of Islamic art, the biennale’s offering is somewhat different, being both temporary and juxtaposing historic objects in dialogue with creations by contemporary artists.”

Alongside Jaffar, Julian Raby, a British Islamic expert and former director at the Smithsonian Institution, and Abdul Rahman Azzam, a cultural adviser and historian, serve as the exhibition’s other artistic directors. 

 “The Islamic Arts Biennale illustrates to the world that Saudi Arabia is capable of staging large-scale cultural projects, which, in narration, curation, design and display, equal any such event in the Western world,” adds Jaffar.

Art of a new Islamic garden

In Islamic cultures, the garden has often been a way to materially express the position of humankind in relation to the Earth and heavens. 

“As a religion born in a desert region, the notion of a fertile garden with abundant water played an important role in early Islam, where it represented paradise—an idealized hereafter,” explains Jaffar. “For Muslim dynasties, an earthly garden reflecting the attributes of heaven provided an optimal setting both for palace and funerary complexes.”

The garden is important, he adds, because it “is the place we go for contemplation, to lose ourselves, irrespective of age or background. It is the place where we gain newfound knowledge and joy from the beauty of plants and flowers and the social experience that comes with meeting others in this outdoor space within nature.”

The visitor explores the garden through various gateways and paths akin to ones in a traditional Charbagh. “The different paths guide one to encounter new knowledge and understanding through singular works of art and the way in which they are esthetically placed and curated in dialogue with one another,” explains Shono, emphasizing how the positioning of the works aims to create moments of healing, rejuvenation and transcendence.

Ideas surrounding emotional and physical healing are poignantly introduced in Saudi artist Fatma Abdulhadi’s installation “I Wish You in Heaven,” a scent-based and interactive installation utilizing the basil plant. The work delves into both her personal experience of loss and the Islamic significance of basil in grieving and remembering loved ones in some societies. Basil is mentioned several times in the Qur’an, where it is considered one of God’s gifts to humankind. Its pleasant smell has long been considered in some Muslim societies to be beneficial to one’s well-being. 

Near Abdulhadi’s installation of basil stands a large shiny copper object with lenses that constitutes Lebanese artist Tamara Kalo’s “The Optics of a Rising Sun,” positioned like a trinket discovered in the garden. It was inspired by the camera obscura of Arab mathematician and astronomer Ibn Al Haytham (ca. 965-1040 CE), known as the first to show how human vision is a result of light entering the eye then processed by the brain. 

Inside visitors can view a live image of their surroundings through an upside-down projection. Kalo’s work underlines the subjective processes of human perception and was inspired by an interpretation of the Qur’anic verse from chapter Al-Nur (24:35) in which Allah’s light is described as emanating from a blessed olive tree that is neither west nor east. 

Behind the works of Kalo and Abdulhadi is an expansive ground installation of many colors by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi titled “Zubaydah Trail (Between Sacred Cities).” Qureshi creates a space, akin to a large carpet, where visitors to AlMidhallah can gather to rest and contemplate as if in a meeting place around an oasis. The work serves as a memorial to the historic pilgrimage route from Kufa, Iraq, to Makkah dating back more than 1,000 years. The piece is decorated with vibrant woven strips to evoke a water source inspired by the Charbagh’s separate waterways. 

A universal approach

“We did not approach the artists as Muslims or to develop Islamic concepts but to look at Islam as a lived belief system important to many people,” explains Shono. “Islam is part of our cultural and societal fabric.”

Saudi artist Bashaer Hawsawi’s installation “My gift to you is a garden” covers the ground like a tapestry but made of brooms and wooden sticks. 

Growing up in the spiritual landscapes of Makkah, Hawsawi recalls her mother would often invite pilgrims to their home. They traveled from across the globe—China, India and Africa—and often left or gave fabrics to her family after they left. The brooms in “My gift to you is a garden” represent the artist’s mother’s obsession with cleaning to prepare the house for guests. 

“The work is part of my ‘cleansing’ series of artworks begun in 2019 to better understand myself and how I think about myself as a woman,” explains Hawsawi. “I didn’t pay attention to the materials that I lived with each day—a sofa, rug or particular fabric—until I realized how these items have influenced me and also my artistic practice.”

She notes that pilgrims’ journey to Jeddah on their route to Makkah and Madinah itself constitutes the idea of “cleansing from within.” 

“The cultures of the pilgrims that came to stay with us from around the world have influenced my art,” explains Hawsawi. “The brush symbolizes letting things go from within, a spiritual cleansing.”

Hawsawi’s work offers an endearing and powerful contrast to the other more muted, earth-colored artworks in AlMidhallah. The soft red bristles on the dozens of broom heads immediately jump out in color and seem from afar to constitute a carpet where visitors to “the garden” can pause and rest. 

More vibrant color can be found nearby in British Pakistani Osman Yousefzada’s “Arrivals.” The installation of 60 bright blue stools, created in 2022 and originally commissioned by the British Council in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, consists of a large cube made of dozens of colorfully woven traditional stools known as peerhi in Urdu that are stacked together, apart from one or two stray ones that have been taken out according to the needs of visitors to the biennale.

Yousefzada’s participatory artwork, stationed as if made for a garden to be used whenever and wherever visitors wish to recline and pause, also pays tribute to the acts of packing, unpacking and repacking by pilgrims to Makkah and migrants around the world. The experience echoes the artist’s own family journey from Pakistan to the UK and emphasizes the role of cultural heritage that lives within such packages.

“The work is about the idea of the singular and how it expands into the communal and then retracts again,” Yousefzada says. “You can take a stool away from the gathering and place it wherever you wish in this outdoor ‘garden’ area, and then you bring it back to the group of chairs.”

The chairs, explains Yousefzada, are a metaphor for how “we connect in groups of twos or threes or as singular entities and then to a larger entity, and there is a meditative quality in such activity.” He echoes the deep contemplative qualities that can be experienced either alone or with a group throughout AlMidhallah. 

For many this is a place to relish in connections made between historical and contemporary works of art, to find regeneration within natural and man-made beauty and to encounter a new metaphysical rendition of home for all in a biennale that celebrates Islamic art in the birthplace of Islam.