Saudi Arabia's 21,39 Jeddah Arts exhibition showcases emerging local talent with Safar show

In 2017, the 21,39 Jeddah Arts exhibition in Saudi Arabia featured the three-part show Safar, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, which included works by 16 emerging Saudi-based artists. The exhibition, part of a multi-month program spearheaded by the Saudi Arts Council and chaired by Princess Jawaher Al-Saud, replaced the earlier Jeddah Art Week (JAW) that ran from 2013 to 2014. JAW was initiated by Art Jameel, a cultural foundation under the Abdul Latif Jameel group. Safar's first segment, 'The Mall', displayed installations in a mall setting, including Nasser Al-Salem's cement brick monument They Flaunt their Buildings (2017) and Zahra Al-Ghamdi's sculptural work The Labyrinth and Time (2017) made from cotton, sand, and water. Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani presented a mixed-media installation with a hand-pigmented sand mosaic and video. The second part, 'The Home', took place in Al-Balad, featuring Abdullah Al-Othman's Suspended (2017), where a nineteenth-century women's shelter was wrapped in aluminium foil. The third segment, 'The City', in King Abdullah Economic City, included older video works by artists like Douglas Gordon and Anri Sala. The exhibition aimed to encourage local talent, with themes of dystopia and preservation emerging. Study trips to Gwangju and Berlin preceded the commissions. Previous editions of 21,39 included Past is Prologue (2014), Fast Forward (2015), and Earth and Ever After (2016).