Debut Art Week Riyadh Takes Place in Saudi Arabia

The Saudi art programme continues to grow

The inaugural Art Week Riyadh opened on April 6 2025 with the aim of positioning Riyadh as a global cultural destination. The event’s theme was At The Edge, an ambitious week of events striving to reimagine an interconnected global arts ecosystem that contributes to Saudi Arabia’s creative economy, while inspiring the preservation of art collecting and patronage.

“This initiative is about creating a space where ideas, histories, and creative visions intersect”, said Her Highness Princess Adwaa bint Yazeed bin Abdullah Al Saud, Head of Art Week Riyadh to The Art Newspaper, “Riyadh has long been a city of growth, and through Art Week Riyadh we hope to contribute to its cultural future, one that is open, dynamic, and deeply rooted in both heritage and innovation.”

The week-long event took place at key cultural sites across Riyadh including Al Mousa Center and JAX District. Overseen by Vittoria Matarrese as Artistic Director and Curator - who was the Director of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo for more than 12 years - the program included over 45 galleries from both Saudi Arabia and abroad. “It was very important for us to be playful and not have the kind of rigid structure or format we’re used to seeing. Art Week Riyadh sits in between an exhibition and an art fair. It’s really a constellation of events,” Matarrese tells Arab News. “Unlike major art events that often impose universal themes and rely on globally established artists, we wanted to work within the frame of a regional art ecosystem, embracing the textures, the urgencies, the sensibilities of the Arabian Peninsula. We are trying to retrace something which is very specific and, in this way, we propose a critical departure (from the normal) format.” Associate Curator Victoria Gandit-Lelandais further told Arab News that: “I think it’s about making people stop implementing the European and American formats into different places because they don’t have to fit - the format can be adapted. With Riyadh growing so fast, the kind of dialogues that we have built are so important to bring people here, but not with a Western look at how art should be.”

Many of the events centered around Riyadh’s JAX District - a hub of warehouse buildings-turned art spaces - where the focal exhibition At The Edge took place. The exhibition sought to examine the interplay of innovation and tradition, global influences and local narratives, as well as contemporary visions and heritage. At The Edge highlighted how Saudi Arabia is both deeply connected to, yet distinct from, global currents in contemporary art through a curated selection of work exploring contemporary creativity as both a site of cultural expression and a catalyst for dialogue.

In addition, a number of galleries from across the region and further afield presented 45 exhibitions that aligned with three thematic threads running throughout the week: “Everyday Life”, “Landscapes”, and “Motifs”. This included shows at both JAX District and Al Mousa Center from A. Gorgi Gallery (Tunisia), Albareh Art Gallery (Bahrain) Hunna Art (Kuwait), Lawrie Shabibi (UAE), Wadi Finan Art Gallery (Jordan) and Gallery Misr (Egypt).

Riyadh’s JAX District also hosted three exhibitions from Ithra Collection, Art Jameel Collection and The Saudi Research and Media Group, all art collections based in Saudi Arabia. This section was titled Collections in Dialogue, which emphasised the role of patronage and collecting in shaping artistic expression. This included a Saudi specific presentation from SRMG, which exhibited three decades of Saudi abstraction through the work of a number of artists including Mohammed Al Saleem and Abdulhalim Radwi.

A number of JAX District’s artist residents also hosted open studios, which included Saudi Arabia’s leading artists Ahmed Mater and Ayman Zedani, allowing the public to go inside the working environment of some of the region’s most acclaimed artists.

As well as exhibitions, Art Week Riyadh presented a public program curated by Shumon Basar called How to Art World? Lessons in Value. This informative series of high-profile workshops and talks was presented in collaboration with Sotheby’s, Gagosian and Christie’s, asking questions about the visual arts in Saudi Arabia and Riyadh specifically.

Celebrating the Saudi art scene, Art Week Riyadh was organized by the Visual Arts Commission under the Ministry of Culture, with aims to continue promoting the Saudi Art Scene in years to come. “This first edition is about fostering meaningful conversations and strengthening connections between local and global artistic communities”, explained Dina Amin, CEO of the Visual Arts Commission to ART AFRICA Magazine. Basma Harasani, Associate Curator, and the only Saudi in the curatorial team told Arab News: “This did not exist when I was growing up. The fact that we can see our dreams come to fruition now - and (see) bigger projects like Art Week Riyadh - I feel very lucky and privileged to be a part of that.” It seems like further exciting art weeks in Riyadh are on the horizon.

Art Week Riyadh took place between April 6-13 2025.