Best in Show: Highlights from Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026

BEST IN SHOW | HAPPENINGS | WORLD OF CABANA

Gianluca Longo travels to Saudi Arabia for the third edition of the Diriyah Biennale of Contemporary Art in Riyadh, discovering an intellectually-driven art fair and a vibrant city bridging modernity and tradition. He shares an artistic postcard from the Biennale and his 12 'Best in Show' highlights, including a concrete and plexiglass dinner scene and a 99-letter installation sculpted from mud brick. 

BY GIANLUCA LONGO | HAPPENINGS | 12 FEBRUARY 2026 

Highlight: Theo Mercier's surrealistic landscape of different objects, carved in sand. Image © Alessandro Brasile, courtesy Diriyah Biennale Foundation.

The third edition of the Diriyah Biennale of Contemporary Art opened in Riyadh at the end of January. There is no better place than Riyadh to host such an intellectually driven Biennale: a city of great vibrancy, fast growth, and young energy; a crossroads between the Arab Region and the world, yet keeping its old heritage and traditions. 

Located in the JAX Creative District, within the historic site of Diriyah, the Biennale welcomes 65 participating artists from 37 nations – including more than 20 new commissions – with artistic direction and curation by Nora Razian, of Art Jameel, and cultural theorist, Sabih Ahmed. Both know the Arab region’s artistic panorama very well. 

The chosen title, In Interludes and Transitions, echoes a common idiom by calling up the cycles of encampments and journeys among nomadic communities in the Arabian Peninsula. The co-artistic directors have conceived the exhibition as an imaginative choreography where stories and ideas move together, considering the world as a multitude of ‘processions’. The Biennale proposes, in fact, to rethink the world in its intense motion, through processions that entangle humans with any sort of currents, be they visual or perhaps planetary, multi-species, spiritual or technological. 

Highlight: Etel Adnan's large artwork is comprised of 96 colorful tiles. Image © Alessandro Brasile, courtesy Diriyah Biennale Foundation.

Harnessing synergies between visual art, music and poetry – a hallmark of cultural expression in the Arab world and across diverse cultures – the Biennale creates arenas that bring together works by artists, musicians, filmmakers, architects and writers "to amplify the resilience of people in times of uncertainty", as pointed out by the curators themselves. The exhibition unfolds through various movements of ideas and cultures, inspired by the flows that have long connected the Arab region with the world. 

Here, Saudi artists have a platform for engaging local audiences in international cultural productions, while artists from around the world can connect with audiences in Saudi Arabia. Visitors are invited to walk through the Biennale's big pavilions and experience a wide range of artworks, ideas, videos and words. 

The scenography, by Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, reimagines the JAX district's industrial architecture as a weightless arrangement of colors (of the surrounding desert landscapes) and forms (as they were in constant movement). Their design also guides visitors through a flowing composition of shifting planes and curved passages in a continuous, immersive movement across the five vast exhibition halls.

Highlight: Petrit Halilaj's 38 suspended works are based on his childhood drawings. Image © Alessandro Brasile, courtesy Diriyah Biennale Foundation.

Best in Show: Gianluca's Highlights

In the first pavilion, the 38 gigantic suspended works by Kosovo-born artist, Petrit Halilaj, are drawings made when he was just 13-years-old. Inspired by nature, they are poignant in their childish styles and proportions, revealing a complicated relationship between reality, and imagination or memory.

Elsewhere, an all-concrete-and-plexiglass dinner scene is an installation by Afra Al Dhaheri, where every element, from casts of feet to abstract vases and vessels, evoke the flux in the Arab tradition of sitting on the floor to dine and commune. Here, the artist wanted to highlight how personal histories mix with contemporary infrastructures. 

Highlight: 'The Slipper’s Journey' by Emirati artist Abdullah Al Saadi. Image © Gianluca Longo.

Turkish artist Muge Yilamz, meanwhile, combined hand-carved birch and pine wood with metals and surfaces finished with CNC machines for her colorful sculptures, which bridge traditional craft with digital technique. Her pieces resemble imaginary deities inspired by the visual language of the archaeological remains and ancient myths of her native Anatolia. They also stand as bookshelves where Yilamz has displayed her favorite books (Frankenstein and The Handmaid’s Tale, among others). 

In his large work, called Untitled Indian, artist Rajesh Chaitya Vangad depicts the tarpa, a musical instrument and dance performed by the Warli community on moonlit nights to celebrate the harvest, by painting a white ointment made from rice flour with a bamboo stick and brush. The spiralling movement unravels from the tarpa player at its center, while the music from the wind instrument guides a procession of dancing figures moving in synchrony. Also striking is Lines in Nature by Ethiopian artist Elias Sime – colorful electric wires, which make a geometric network of panels filled with vibrant shapes.

Highlight: Pio Abad's 99 mud brick letters spell out a traditional Ivatan poem. Image © Gianluca Longo.

In another of the vast pavilions, visitors encounter 99 large letters – handcrafted sculptures of mud brick – laid across the floor. The art work, Vanwa, is by Filipino artist, Pio Abad. Each brick represents a single alphabet, while together they spell out a traditional Ivatan poem. Moroccan artist, Amina Saoudi Aït Khay, presented tapestries using natural dyes and pigments – turmeric for yellow, pomegranate peel for warm ochre, tea for beige to grey hues, walnut for caramel, prickly pear cactus flowers for deep browns, and beetroot for salmon pink. The geometry of Amazigh symbols and desert topographies are her themes, showing a dialogue between memory and invention. 

French sculptor and stage director Theo Mercier transformed his exhibition space into a vast surrealistic landscape of different scale objects (from a car to a shell, a fossil and a human ear among others), all made of desert sand. These ‘geological’ forms carry the double imprint of nature and culture. Another highlight is Etel Adnan's large artwork, made of 96 colorful tiles – a mixed-up mosaic, which reflects a dynamic interplay between abstraction, landscapes and environmental forms.

Highlight: Untitled Indian, by Rajesh Chaitya Vangad depicts the tarpa, a musical instrument and dance. Image © Gianluca Longo.

The Slipper’s Journey by Abdullah Al Saadi, from the Emirates, comprises dozens of stones and small rocks each inscribed with marks, symbols and paint that chart the course of his travels, to then become his own travel companions. Elyas Alavi from Afghanistan is a visual artist, poet, and curator; his collage series merges the artist’s photograph from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and the Australian outback with calligraphy fragments inspired by a cameleer’s handwritten notebook.

My final highlight, a charming painting of a man sitting in a white thobe, is the work of American artist, Lulua Alyahya. The man hovers between presence and disappearance, in his form dissolving into a field of luminous specks. 

The Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh, runs through May 2nd.