Saudi Arabia Pavilion at 60th Venice Biennale of Art

The Saudi Arabia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024: the artists of the pavilion, the works, the times, the periods, the cost of the tickets and the exhibition venue.

April 20th to November 26th 2024

The 60th Biennale Arte will open to the public on April 20. But on the 17th, 18th and 19th there will be the various events and collateral events that always enliven suddenly Venetian artistic life. The awards ceremony will take place the day of opening to the public.

The title of the 60th edition of the Art Biennale is Foreigners Everywhere - Foreigners Everywhere.

The exhibition will be divided into between the Central Pavilion in the Giardini and the Arsenale, including 213 artists from 88 nations. There are 26 Italian artists, 180 first participations in the International Exhibition, 1433 works and objects on display, 80 new productions.

Go to the page of the 60th Venice Art Biennale

Saudi Arabia Pavilion at 60h Biennale Arte of Venice

Press Release of Saudi Arabia Pavilion

Manal AlDowayan is representing Saudi Arabia at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with a multimedia installation entitled Shifting Sands: A Battle Song.

Exploring the medium of sound for the first time, in Shifting Sands: A Battle Song AlDowayan brings together the sonic and geological features of the desert with the voices and energy of Saudi women during a period of profound cultural transformation.

Following the structure of Alardah and Aldahha, battle ceremonies traditionally performed by men, Shifting Sands: A Battle Song is shaped around a central motivating element. Here, it is the voices of Saudi women proclaiming themselves, through song, speech, and drawings. Visitors are invited to wind their way through a maze of large-scale, printed silk, petal-like sculptures that take their forms from the desert rose, a crystal commonly found in the desert sands near the artist’s hometown of Dhahran. Like its crystalline formation, for AlDowayan, a desert rose layers multiple dimensions – it is fragility, ephemerality, femininity, and resilience. As with her earlier desert rose sculptures, AlDowayan marks the “body” of these outsized blooms with text. Here, for the first time, the surface of these sculptures is silkscreened with drawings and writings of workshops’ participants, or texts about Saudi women, sourced from local and international news media.

AlDowayan says: “At the Biennale Arte 2024 I will attempt to represent where I stand in my practice, positioned in the context of my community, my country, and the world. I present an artwork inspired by the evolving role of women in my country’s public sphere and their ongoing journey to redefine both the physical space they inhabit and the narratives that have historically defined them.

Shifting Sands: A Battle Song builds on my long-standing investigation into the media image and its impact on self-determination, emphasizing the significance of media representations of women, how women are seen in the collective memory of their society, and how profound the impact these images have on perceiving the humanity of the individuals portrayed.

I hope this artwork will encourage women to look within themselves and to lean on their community of women to find their voice and their space within this new chapter in history, much of which is still unwritten.”

Shifting Sands: A Battle Song will be on view from 20 April to 24 November 2024 at the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the Arsenale, Sale d’Armi, Venice, Italy.

Useful information for the visit

Hours: Gardens from 10.00 to 19.00. Arsenale from 10.00 to 19.00 (from 10.00 to 20.00 on Friday and Saturday until September 30th). Closed on Mondays (except April 22, June 17, July 22, September 2, September 30, October 31, November 18).
Tickets: please visit the official website.
Phone: +39.041.5218711; fax +39.041.2728329
E-mail: aav@labiennale.org
Web: Biennale of Venice