Al-Madar at the Islamic Arts Biennale — a new global center for Islamic art 
Throughout history, Muslim societies have been defined by movement, openness to influences from various places around the world and the exchange of ideas. This has been the case from the Arabian peninsula to West Africa, and from Central Asia to the Indonesian archipelago. Reflecting these shared histories and distinct identities has been at the core of our work for the Islamic Arts Biennale. It was a source of inspiration for its first edition in 2023 and it takes an expanded form in the current one, which is on view in Jeddah until May 25.
How can we convey the breadth of the arts of Islamic civilization in a large-scale exhibition? The obvious approach would have been to establish a new collecting institute that would emphasize historical lineages. But a strategy like this would contravene the global nature of a civilization that is in continuous motion. It would also ignore the fact that many of the most important works of Islamic art are already held by major institutions around the world.
Instead, we launched the Islamic Arts Biennale as a way of bringing together the world’s leading collections of Islamic art. Alongside contemporary art commissions and objects from the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah, these loans come together in a special component of the Biennale that we call Al-Madar, which translates from Arabic as “the orbit.”
To compose Al-Madar, we collaborated with museums, libraries and archives from what is often called the Muslim world and beyond. Our ambition was to bring these collections together to show that any story of Islamic arts cannot be told from one vantage point. More than 30 institutions chose to participate, including the Musee du Louvre (Paris), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and the Vatican Apostolic Library (Vatican City), as well as collections devoted specifically to Islamic arts and cultures, such as the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research (Timbuktu), the Museum of Islamic Art (Doha) and the Manuscripts Institute of Turkiye (Istanbul).
The participation of these institutions allows us to tell stories through objects, stories related to movements and interactions that have shaped the histories of Muslim societies for centuries.
A map of the course of the Nile, from Upper Egypt to the Mediterranean, from the Vatican Apostolic Library is presented alongside a map of the Tigris and Euphrates. Both are attributed to the 17th-century Ottoman Turkish explorer Evliya Celebi and were probably commissioned to accompany the publication of his memoirs. Seen together, they offer a more complete view of his trajectory.
Books of constellations and instruments of celestial navigation from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and the Al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait address practices of navigation across and between continents from the 12th through to 17th centuries. Through these objects, the perspective of a scientific understanding of the world comes into clear focus.
Our intention with the Islamic Arts Biennale is to widen its orbit with each edition, to tell more expansive stories about the arts of Islamic cultures. The objects on view invite exploration, discovery and discussion of many subjects, as varied as maps, to aid the navigation of some of the world’s great rivers, masterpieces of textile arts, shadow puppets and mathematical treatises. This is a constellation that we can all recognize, and that will always help us find our way home.
- Aya Al-Bakree is the CEO of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, a not-for-profit cultural organization in Saudi Arabia that stages the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale and the Islamic Arts Biennale.
