Dana Awartani to Represent Saudi Arabia at 2026 Venice Biennale
61Nov. 12, 2025
Palestinian-Saudi artistDana Awartani, known for refiguring historical forms, themes, and tropes of Middle Eastern cultures, has been chosen to represent Saudi Arabia at the Sixty-FirstVenice Biennale, to take place May 9–November 22, 2026.Antonia Carver, director of the Dubai- and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia–based Art Jameel, will curate the exhibition alongside assistant curator Hafsa Alkhudairi. The theme of the Bienniale, established by the late Koyo Kouoh, is “In Minor Keys” and will be realized by a larger curatorial team in the wake of Kouoh’s May 2025 death.
Awartani, born in Jeddah 1987 to a Saudi mother and a Palestinian father, draws on Islamic and Arab artmaking traditions in a practice that spans painting, video, sculpture, performance, and installation. Her work examines themes including gender, healing, cultural destruction, and sustainability through the lens of politics. Among her best-known works are the mixed-media installationI went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I’d forgotten you. I was dreaming, 2017, which features a video of the artist sweeping up a hand-dyed sand intricately patterned to resemble a traditional tiled floor. Her series “Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your broken bones,” 2019–24, features medicinally dyed silks that have been draped or stretched across frames and punctured or ripped, then darned by the artist, the locations of their wounds corresponding with those of buildings or sites that have been harmed or destroyed through conflict, colonialism, or acts of terror.
Awartani in a statement thanked the Saudi Visual Arts Commission and Ministry of Culture: “My practice is rooted in foregrounding Middle Eastern cultural histories through the revival of craft practices and the preservation of the region’s globally important material heritage; working with my curatorial colleagues, I am thrilled to have the chance to develop a major new work for the Saudi Pavilion, in line with this theme and endeavor, and to be part of ‘In Minor Keys.’”