Red Wind, Coral Worlds

At Hayy Arts in Jeddah, Red Wind, Coral Worlds sets out to reimagine the Red Sea not as a boundary but as a meeting place. On view on the first floor of Art Jameel's exhibition space from 20 May to 26 October 2026, the group exhibition, in the words of the gallery, "sites the Red Sea within an expanded and interconnected oceanic terrain", tracing the worlds that converge across its waters.

The show is curated by Huda Tayob, the South African architectural historian and theorist based at the Royal College of Art in London, and Miriam Hillawi Abraham. The pair were selected through the Art Jameel Curatorial Open Call, and their exhibition follows the material and emotional traces left by centuries of movement across the sea, shaped by trade, pilgrimage, migration and displacement, while also turning to its coral reefs and mangrove forests.

Eighteen artists take part, drawing lines between Saudi Arabia, East Africa and the Indian Ocean world. Among the most striking works is a large-scale piece by Sara Abdu, the Yemeni artist born and raised in Jeddah, made with henna, a material woven through cultural traditions on both shores of the Red Sea. The Sudanese modernist Hussein Shariffe is represented by MM of the North Wind (1960), while Saudi artists including Basmah Felemban, Sarah Al Abdali and Rund Alarabi appear alongside Iranian-born photographer Hoda Afshar and Palestinian artist and architect Dima Srouji.

Speaking to Arab News, Tayob described a region where people are constantly moving to and fro, and argued for an exhibition that engages the senses, from songs and poetry to smell. For visitors in Jeddah, a port city long shaped by the pilgrim routes and trade winds the show evokes, it is a timely reminder that the Red Sea has always been a living archive of exchange.

Red Wind, Coral Worlds runs alongside Global Positioning System on the ground floor of Hayy Arts. Admission is free.