The third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, titled “في الحِلّ والترحال” / “In Interludes and Transitions,” takes place in the cultural capital of Saudi Arabia. Originally established as a project that brings together local and global art by engaging with artists and audiences from across the country and the world, the Biennale reflects on how traditional forms of knowledge dialogue with the nation’s ambition of transformation. Its most recent iteration was inspired by regional history, taking as its point of departure Bedouin and nomadic communities and how they relate to the world through movement. In particular, the Biennale’s artistic directors Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed examined how processions, such as migration, oral tradition, and natural cycles, culminate in transmission and exchange, thereby shaping culture. Together with the curatorial team, consisting of Maan Abu Taleb, May Makki, Kabelo Malatsie, and Lantian Xie, as well as the architecture and exhibition designer Sammy Zarka, the artistic directors propose an understanding of the world not as a fixed entity but as in flux. The interview that follows illuminates the curatorial concept, artistic context, and creative processes behind the Biennale.
Your exhibition brings together musicians, writers, architects, and artists. What new dimensions do you want to open up by inviting these disciplines to contribute?
Nora: When we started conceptualizing the show, we wanted to think about the forms of cultural transmission that are rooted and appreciated here. Orality, history, poetry, literature, and music are all vibrant forms of cultural production in Saudi Arabia. Poetry and literature are widely read, and many forms of Arabic poetry actually emerged here. So, there is a rich history and heritage of oral tradition. This context informed our theme and the artists we wanted to work with.
Sabih: I would even argue that every contemporary practice is interdisciplinary, as strict divisions based on genre, medium or subject are no longer possible. The intersection we foreground in this Biennale is not some radical gesture to present artists from different disciplines. The world itself is already multidisciplinary, and we are tapping into the very specific forms that make sense here.
We also included multisensory works that draw on sound, visuals, and materials. In the Biennale, you experience sound and light spillovers, which are deliberate and choreographed. We refrained from isolating regions or artworks, as we were interested in how things seep into each other and echo across each other's fields of cultural significance.
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Saudi Arabia has seen rapid social change over the past decade, with cinemas opening and public performances increasing. How does “In Interludes and Transitions” address this transformation?
Nora: The Biennale is a product of the transformation in a way. It is part of the growing infrastructure for the arts and the establishment of a public sphere for them. It is also one of the only places where you can see contemporary art at such a scale, and it serves as its biggest platform within Saudi Arabia. In line with the foundation’s objective, the Biennale engages a very broad public. In this way, it epitomizes the changes that have happened and the development of a local arts ecology.
Sabih: The exhibition is hosted in Diriyah, which has a longer historical route in the place. Located right next to the Biennale is the Wadi Hanifa, a valley that goes back a long way in time. This historical site opened up a dialogue across time that has shaped our curatorial thinking.
This Biennale is relatively young and builds upon the previous editions led by Philip Tinari and Ute Meta Bauer in creating a discourse and aesthetic framework, while establishing its place in the country. With this in mind, were there any curatorial risks that were important for you to take with this project? Did challenges arise?
Nora: Not necessarily risks, but we really wanted to think about how people experience the Biennale. By focusing on how you move through it, we tried to create choreographies between the works as well as spaces for rest and gathering. The focus on design, scenography and outdoor commissions was very important for us.
Sabih: To the point of responding to risk, every artwork is a leap into what might be possible. So we have been very lucky to work with artists who have been generous in leaping with us, because that leap can take flight, fall, or land. Some immediately become legible while others take time. The risk, then, is only in terms of what will land and what will not. But this unpredictable outcome is the beauty of every curation. It is taking that leap together with many people and the public.
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Dispersed across the Biennale are various “arenas,” a series of mostly newly commissioned and site-specific works. Where does the name originate?
Sabih: Conventional arenas are sites of gathering. It was relevant for us to present some artworks as “arenas” because they serve as spaces where your senses get activated. Rohini Devasher’s work, for example, rethinks our understanding of the concept of observation not as an individual exercise but a collective one. Or Théo Mercier, whose large sand sculptures, made from local soil, interrupt the flow of the exhibition. Over time, salt sediments started appearing on their facade, representing the awakening of the residual or latent. A lot of research went into these commissions, and we introduced these arenas for people to collectively gather and experience such emergences.
The idea of movement or procession underpins the theme of the exhibition. Movement can be generative, through cultural exchange or trade, yet it can also be harmful, as in cases of forced displacement or exile. How did you navigate that tension in the exhibition?
Nora: I think that comes through the use of the word itself. Processions can be joyful or celebratory, yet they can also be mournful or hard. It is the act of moving together to remember and tell stories, which can also include commemorating difficult histories. In processions of trade, people would start reciting poetry and singing songs, thereby making things shift and invoking change. It is that coming together where the change happens that we want to evoke, which is not always positive.
Sabih: Certainly, this binary understanding is present in the exhibition. We see the world as a multitude of processions. Our approach was to look at the processes that have been shaping the world, with the Biennale becoming a junction of these multiple paths.
You worked as a group of curators with distinct trajectories, but within a highly structured, institutional, and state-funded framework. How did funding structures, timelines, and governance models shape what collective authorship could realistically mean for the show?
Nora: From the very beginning, this has been a collaboration between Sabih and me. We are colleagues and friends, although we had never directly collaborated on a project before. As for the curatorial team, we knew everybody before and had worked with some of them. Shared affinities were already in place, and everybody brought their own intellectual interests, references, and deep knowledge of the art practices we wanted to include. It has been a really great learning experience for all of us.
Sabih: The curatorial team includes colleagues from our own generation, and we are a generation that has seen the art world flourish through collaborative processes. We have had the good fortune of working with most of the curators before, so this Biennale became a continuation of that art practice. For us, it is not about authorship but about collective thinking and distributing that authorship. It is also the experience of seeing systems in transformation, and us, as curators, insisting on working collaboratively as part of the systemic changes conducted by our generation. It is not simply a gesture; it is an ethos.
Nora: This way of working also acknowledges that the intellectual labor of many people goes into producing something like this, whereas past models occasionally silenced the contributions of large teams in the conception of an exhibition.
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Can you share more about your collaboration with Mohammed Alhamdan: a star of Saudi internet culture, a prominent figure in the country’s young cultural landscape, and also the voice of a generation that has been at the forefront of social change in the kingdom.
Nora: Alhamdan is really interesting. He is an important cultural figure in Saudi Arabia, and we wanted to involve him in this edition of the Biennale. He worked closely with Maan Abu Taleb, and he produced a live performance, collaborating with other musicians, singers, and performers. He proposed the idea of a procession, reimagining settlements, departures, and the Bedouin heritage, directly symbolizing the theme of the exhibition.
Sabih: Correct, but in its most contemporary form. His work, Folding the Tents, draws on the history of camels and how their footsteps informed this musical meter called the rajaz. The procession includes the Chasse, a pickup truck model that has replaced camels as the contemporary mode of transportation. The work visualizes how forms and vehicles of movement have transformed over time. For the performance, the participants move along the Wadi Hanifa, as if reactivating a flow across the valley that, at the moment, is silent.
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The Biennale includes several multigenerational dialogues, most notably with a conversation between the visual artists Thảo Nguyên Phan and Điềm Phùng Thị. How do these conversations help develop the themes of continuity and transition that the Biennale puts forward?
Nora: One of the earliest works we were discussing was Thảo Nguyên Phan's Reincarnation of Shadows. The video installation has its genesis in her encounter with the modernist works of the Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair. Choucair’s modular sculptural systems reminded the artist of Điềm Phùng Thị's sculptures because of their similarity in form and method, even though the two practices developed independently of one another. Thảo Nguyên Phan's work pays tribute to the life and oeuvre of the late Điềm Phùng Thị. This sequence of interactions signifies a dialogue between characters from the past and present and enables us to rethink art history by revealing how things reach us, when they reach us, and why.
Sabih: This intergenerational dialogue layers time, because we are not subdividing these artists into art-historical categories, viewing them from a modernist or contemporary point of view. Rather, we understand the past as unsettled as it strides into the present. Theaster Gates explained how even erased histories leave behind a rhythm. These cadences continue to carry and might magnify in ways we cannot predict. Although Gates’ work is not included in the show, we were interested in those upheavals and unexpected amplifications. In this case, the work of Thảo Nguyên Phan has amplified the legacy of Điềm Phùng Thị in a way that no museum could have anticipated. It is in a contemporary artwork artist's invocation where she awakens the dormant, in this case, the importance of the modernist artist Điềm Phùng Thị.
We know forms of life from 40,000 years ago have reemerged because of melting ice caps. They have coexisted with us through time, and now that they have resurfaced, we do not know what diseases they might cause. They are not all good and can also be dangerous, but how do we embrace that world?
The third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale is on view to the public from January 30, 2026, and will run through May 2, 2026.
- Images
Cover: Folding the Tents, 2026, by Mohammed Alhamdan (7amdan). Procession; Approx. 50 min. Photo © Alessandro Brasile, courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
Fig.1 In Interludes and Transitions, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026, poster wall in JAX District. Photo by Alessandro Brasile, courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
Fig.2 House of Eternity, 2026, by Théo Mercier. Sand, bentonite clay, metal; dimensions variable. Photo © Alessandro Brasile, courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
Fig.3 In Interludes and Transitions, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026, Mohammed Alhamdan (7amdan), Folding the Tents (2026), Photo by Alessandro Brasile, courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
Fig.4 Works by Thảo Nguyên Phan and Điềm Phùng Thị included in installation view. (1) No Jute Cloth for the Bones, 2019–ongoing, by Thảo Nguyên Phan. Raw jute stalk; 400 × 1000 cm. (2) Drawings for Reincarnations of Shadows, 2025, by Thảo Nguyên Phan. 15 watercolor drawings on paper; 28.5 × 38.5 cm each. (3) Fifteen sculptural objects, five fabric collages, and lithographs, 1960s–1997, by Điềm Phùng Thị. (4) Display table based on original designs by Điềm Phùng Thị, 2026; 90 × 600 × 500 cm. Photo © Alessandro Brasile, courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation.
