Mousse Magazine

With its suggestion of renewal and rebirth, After Rain, the evocative title chosen by artistic director Ute Meta Bauer for the second Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, seems to reflect on the sweeping societal changes taking place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Crowded art openings such as the unveiling of the Diriyah Biennale on the eve of the official start date, at which well-heeled Saudis in traditional dress and foreign nationals could be seen engaging with the 177 artworks presented, were simply unheard of a few years ago; until the kingdom started issuing tourist visas in 2019, the country was practically out-of-bounds for non-Muslim travelers.

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Natural materials such as lacquer, rattan, rubber, camphor, juniper, and mulberry feature prominently in the vast sculptural installations included in the “Knowledge in Material and Spiritual Intelligence,” one of the most seductive sections at the main site, also plunged in darkness just like “Water and Habitats.” Here, artists explore traditional, labor-intensive techniques: Vietnamese lacquer painting in Palimpsest: A Light Exists in Spring (2013–ongoing), Phi Phi Oanh’s slide projections magnifying and dematerializing lacquer; batik dyeing using wax in Rossella Biscotti’s richly patterned series of rubber works individually named after characters in Indonesian Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novel The Buru Quartet (1980–88); and darning in Let Me Mend Your Broken Bones (2023), an installation consisting of diaphanous silk fabrics that Saudi Palestinian artist Dana Awartani had dyed in Kerala, drawing on local expertise. The darned holes map out heritage sites in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen that have been destroyed in the conflicts that have ravaged the region since 2010.