Misk Art Institute's 'Along the Way' Follows in the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta

Thirty-four artists, one very old traveller and a lot of roads

Did you know that Ibn Battuta, the fourteenth-century Moroccan explorer, was one of the most widely travelled people of the pre-modern world, journeying through North Africa, Arabia, Persia, India and China? His journeys are the starting point for Along the Way, a thoughtful new exhibition at Misk Art Institute in Riyadh that opened last month and runs until 31 March 2027.

Spread across the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall, the exhibition brings together 69 artworks and historical objects by 34 artists from Saudi Arabia, the wider region and beyond. Rather than treating travel simply as getting from one place to another, it looks at journeys that are physical and intellectual, outward and inward. In Misk's own words, mapping becomes "an open and interpretive act, shaped by lived experience rather than fixed coordinates", and the works are laid out as "a series of crossings rather than a linear progression".

According to Al Manara, the exhibition moves through five ideas: maps and how we draw them, travel as a way of knowing, wayfinding, emotional maps, and nature as a living map. The works span painting, photography, sculpture, installation, digital practices and textiles, alongside archival material and rare manuscripts.

The list of artists is impressive, mixing pioneers of modern art from our region with some of the most exciting names working today. Among them are Dia al-Azzawi, Safeya Binzagr, Mona Saudi, Manal AlDowayan, Marwan Rechmaoui, Filwa Nazer, Moath Alofi, Basmah Felemban, Sara Almutlaq and Zahiyah Alraddadi, as well as artists from South Asia and Africa such as Gulammohammed Sheikh, Anju Dodiya and Tewodros Hagos. Encouragingly, a good number of the participating artists are women.

Interestingly, the contemporary works sit beside historical treasures that remind us how long people in our region have been trying to picture the world. These include a copy of al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars, the great tenth-century treatise on the constellations, al-Qazwini's Nuzhat al-Qulub with its circular world map, and an engraved astronomical disc from Persia.

One of the works that best captures the spirit of the show is Beyond the Hills (2008) by the Omani artist Hassan Meer, a photograph of a hill facing the sea with birds circling around it. Speaking to Oman Daily, Meer described the work as a spiritual journey in which the body does not necessarily have to move, with the hill standing for transition, the sea for the unknown and the birds for freedom.

For anyone less familiar with it, Misk Art Institute was founded in 2017 as part of the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, Misk, to support artists from Saudi Arabia and the Arab world, and the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall has become one of Riyadh's key exhibition spaces. Earlier this year we wrote about its programme celebrating the Kingdom's pioneering artists, and it is good to see the institute widening its lens.

So, what can we take away from this? At a time when travel across our region has become so much harder for so many people, an exhibition that treats journeys as something that can happen in the mind and the heart as well as on the road feels especially poignant. We can't wait to see it.

Along the Way is on view at the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall, Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, until 31 March 2027. Entry is free with online booking.

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