As the global art scene increasingly turns toward the Middle East, the Diriyah Biennale 2026 emerges as one of the most significant cultural events of the decade. More than a large-scale exhibition, the biennale stands as a living archive of stories shaped by displacement, resilience, spirituality, and transformation.
Hosted in the JAX District of Riyadh, the third edition of the Diriyah Biennale brings together over seventy artists from more than thirty countries. Curated by Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition unfolds under the poetic theme In Interludes and Transitions.
The biennale opened on 30 January 2026 and runs until 2 May 2026.
Rather than following a linear path, the exhibition is designed as an emotional journey. Visitors move through spaces that feel like chapters in a collective human story. Large-scale installations stand beside intimate works, performance meets painting, and silence coexists with sound.
One of the most emotionally resonant works comes from Petrit Halilaj, whose monumental installation transforms childhood refugee drawings into suspended, floating forms. Birds, mountains, and imagined landscapes hover in the air, symbolizing how memory and imagination can become acts of survival.
Saudi-Bahraini artist Faisal Samra delivers an intense visual statement through a monumental performance painting created with splashes of paint and controlled air pressure, capturing the emotional turbulence of modern existence.
The exhibition also celebrates quieter voices. Emirati conceptual artist Abdullah Al Saadi presents stones marked with hand-drawn maps of his journeys, turning the landscape into a living diary.
Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji offers blurred paintings resembling half-loaded digital images, questioning how trauma is remembered in a screen-saturated world.
Completing this narrative is Sudanese painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, whose swirling compositions inspired by spiritual rituals celebrate healing and ancestral memory.
The Diriyah Biennale 2026 is more than an exhibition; it is a space for reflection, connection, and renewal, reminding us that every transition carries the promise of new beginnings.
