Hayy Jameel’s opening season lineup features introspection into Saudi Arabian heritage

Art Jameel’s new creative complex in Jeddah, KSA, called Hayy Jameel launched an opening season that extends to April 30^th, 2022. Each month of the opening season is dedicated to celebrating the complex’s varied elements. The opening celebrates Hayy Jameel’s multidisciplinary approach to it’s role as the home for the arts and the Jameel family’s 75^th year of global philanthropy.

With a  varied focus on exhibitions and installations, the opening season interacts with its audience through community projects, workshops, tours and talks. January and February of 2022 focuses on entrepreneurship as the first of the Hayy residents move into their spaces, while March and April 2022 will see the opening of Hayy Cinema and the Hayy Community with workshops, programmes and screenings and a special calendar of events for Ramadan.

Hayy Jameel’s 2022 lineup of programmes features artists of multidisciplinary artworks from sculptures in chocolate, to immersive light works and audiovisual structures. The exhibitions are rooted in Jeddah, yet speak of international relevance with more than 45 artists and researchers from 20 countries and features existing and newly-commissioned works by 19 artists from Saudi Arabia

The 17,000 square-metre Hayy Jameel cultural complex space, designed by waiwai, has itself already received nods internationally, including a Golden Lion for the principal architects of the building, Wael Al Awar and Kenichi Teramoto at the UAE Pavillion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Hayy Jameel’s Opening Season Programming:

‘Staple: What’s on your plate?”
Hayy Arts
December 6, 2021 – April 30, 2022

The Hayy Arts opens with an exhibition co-curated by Art Jameel’s Rahul Gudipudi and Delfina Foundations’ Dani Burrows. It takes an incisive and research-based look into food futures and the eco-social entanglements of what we eat. The multidisciplinary exhibition features chocolate sculptures, beehives, print and audiovisual installations through the lens of trade, exchange, coloniality, labour, tradition, myth and neo-imperial food production.

‘Illuminate: A Noor Riyadh Capsule’
December 6,2021 – February 6, 2022

Located across the first floor of the Hayy Jameel cultural complex, is a series of large-scale immersive light installations on tour adapted from the 2021 Noor Riyadh festival, by Riyadh Art. The installation brings together 11 Saudi artists who have greatly contributed to further the practice of art-making in Saudi Arabia.

‘Paused Mirror: The Saudi Artists’
Osama Esid
December 2021 – December 2022

This commission of Osama Esid photography takes an almost biographical look at exploration of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia via historical photography methods. The project is intended as a multigenerational tribute to artists who are at the heart of the Hayy Community. The ‘Paused Mirror’, displayed across the complex is a series of portraits taken using ‘wet plate collodion’ methodology and is created while on a journey across Saudi Arabia.

‘Hayy Jameel: A creative community in the making’
waiwai
December 6, 2021 – April 30, 2022

The exhibition, set in Fenaa Hayy, charts the making of the Hayy Jameel space by waiwai. It displays early architectural sketches, drawings and models of the Hayy Jameel. Spread across the cultural complex, the exhibition unfolds in four chapters following the four pillars that informed the ethos of the space.

‘Tactile Surfaces’
Bricklab
December 6, 2021 – March 30, 2022

The exhibition charts the inception and early ideation of design of the Hayy Cinema space, from its inception in 2019. The three-part installation brings together objects, models, videos and archival material that maps out the architectural studio’s approach to designing the city’s first arthouse cinema. The installation was designed after a focused research on the community-building role of cinema in society.