Afra Al Dhaheri, Dining East or West, 2016
The third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, In Interludes and Transitions, unfolds across the JAX District through May 2, 2026, assembling more than 65 artists from over 37 countries alongside an ambitious slate of new commissions. Led by Co-Artistic Directors Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition resists the conventions of a geographic survey, instead positioning movement defined by migration, exchange, procession – as both its curatorial framework and a defining condition of the contemporary. Here, movement is treated not as metaphor but as a structure through which culture is continuously made and remade.
For Ahmed, the premise begins with the nuances of translation. “In Arabic (titled “في الحِلّ والترحال” ) the theme of the biennale means the cycles of journeys and encampments that have actually defined so many lives of communities, especially the Bedouin communities of the region,” he explains. “The English title… is not a one-to-one translation, but rather a different kind of way of articulating the cycles of itinerancy.” The project, he continues, seeks “to reconsider the world as a multitude of processions,” one shaped by histories and experiences that unfold through motion rather than permanence.