ArtDayME: The Diriyah Biennale Foundation announces "And all that is in between" as the title for the second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale, set to open from January 25 until May 25, 2025 in Jeddah, a city that has represented a meeting point of cultures for centuries, at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport, a site that echoes with memory and emotion for millions of Muslim pilgrims embarking on their sacred journeys for Hajj and Umrah every year; by juxtaposing historical objects from Islamic cultures with contemporary art, the Biennale will explore how faith is experienced, expressed, and celebrated through feeling, thinking, and making.

The Islamic Arts Biennale will consist of seven unique components (AlBidaya, AlMadar, AlMuqtani, AlMathala, Makkah al-Mukarramah, Al-Madinah al-Munawwarah, and AlMusalla) spread out through different galleries and outdoor spaces, across 100,000 square meters of dedicated exhibition space.

List of participating Institutions (as of September 25, subject to change)

The David Collection (Copenhagen, Denmark); the Museum of Islamic Art (Cairo, Egypt); The Al Thani Collection (Paris, France); the Louvre Museum (Paris, France); the Benaki Museum (Athens, Greece); National Library of Indonesia (Jakarta, Indonesia); the State Museum of West Nusa Tenggara (Mataram, Indonesia); Sonobudoyo Museum (Yogyakarta, Indonesia); the Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art (Genoa, Italy); Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, al-Sabah Collection (Kuwait City, Kuwait); the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research (Timbuktu, Mali); the National Museum - Sultanate of Oman (Muscat, Oman); the Khalidi Library (Jerusalem, Palestine); Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal); the Maritime Museum (Lisbon, Portugal); the Museum of Islamic Art (Doha, Qatar); the Qatar National Library (Doha, Qatar); the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia); the King Abdulaziz Complex for Endowment Libraries (Madinah, Saudi Arabia); King Fahad National Library (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia); the Trust for the Alhambra and Generalife, Alhambra Museum (Granada, Spain); Institute of Valencia de Don Juan (Madrid, Spain); the National Archaeological Museum (Madrid, Spain); National Heritage Institute (Tunis, Tunisia); the Manuscript Institution of Türkiye (Istanbul, Türkiye); the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts (London, United Kingdom); the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, United Kingdom); the Bodleian Libraries (Oxford, United Kingdom); the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford (Oxford, United Kingdom); the Hispanic Society Museum and Library (New York, United States); the Abu Rayhan Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies and the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan, of the Art and Culture Development Foundation Uzbekistan (Tashkent, Uzbekistan); and the Vatican Apostolic Library (Vatican City).

List of participating artists (as of September 25, subject to change)

Fatma Abdulhadi, Ahmad Angawi, Saeed Gebaan, Louis Guillaume, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), Nour Jaouda, Tamara Kalo, Asif Khan, Takashi Kuribayashi, Ahmed Mater, Mehdi Moutashar, Timo Nasseri, Hayat Osama, Nohemi Pérez, Imran Qureshi, Arcangelo Sassolino, and Charwei Tsai.

The curatorial team

The 2025 Islamic Arts Biennale is led by Julian Raby, a distinguished scholar, former lecturer in Islamic art and architecture at the University of Oxford, and former director of the National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution, who also served on the curatorial team of the first edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale; Amin Jaffer, in his ongoing role as Director of The Al Thani Collection, whose academic and curatorial work focuses on the meeting of European and Asian cultures; and Abdul Rahman Azzam, an acclaimed author and historian who served as Senior Expert Advisor for AlMadar in 2023. Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, whose work deals with questions of spirituality and the role of imagination in shaping reality, and who represented Saudi Arabia at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2022 while also participating as an artist in the first edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale, serves as Contemporary Art Curator.

The curatorial team includes Masa Al-Kutoubi (AlMadar Lead), Rizwan Ahmad (Curator), Heather Ecker (Curator), William Robinson (Curator), Marika Sardar (Curator), Joanna Chevalier (Associate Curator), Amina Diab (Associate Curator), Sarah Al Abdali (Assistant Curator), Bilal Badat (Assistant Curator), Faye Behbehani (Assistant Curator), and Wen Wen (Assistant Curator).