Islamic Arts Biennale 2023

Artistic Director

Sumayya Vally

Principal of the award-winning architecture and research firm, Counterspace—Vally’s design, research and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and territory, particularly for African and Islamic conditions—both rooted and diasporic. Her design process is often forensic, and draws on the aural, performance and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. In 2022, Vally was selected by the World Economic Forum to be one of its Young Global Leaders, a community of the world’s most promising artists, researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, and political leaders, and, as a TIME100 Next list honouree, has been identified as someone who will shape the future of architectural practice and canon. She recently joined the World Monuments Fund Board of Directors, and serves on several boards through her interest in dynamic forms of archive, embodied heritage and supporting new networks of knowledge in the arts. In 2019, Counterspace was invited to design the 20th Serpentine Pavilion in London, making Vally the youngest architect ever to win this internationally renowned commission. With the Serpentine, she has initiated and developed a new fellowship program, Support Structures for Support Structures, which assists artists and collectives working at the intersection of art with social justice, the archive, and ecology. Vally is currently collaborating on the design of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia, the first presidential library dedicated to a female head of state, where she will oversee the scenography, pavilions, and exhibition spaces. She is also working on a garden and gathering place commemorating the 5th Pan-African Congress held in Manchester, UK, in 1945. Sumayya’s practice operates adjacent to the academy. For 6 years (2015-2021), she led the masters’ studio, Unit 12, at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg—founded by Professor Lesley Lokko, with the intent to create a curriculum for the African continent. She has taught and lectured widely, most recently as Pelli Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Vally currently leads a new masters’ programme, Hijra هجرة, at the Royal College of Art and is an Honorary Professor in Practice at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Curator

Dr Omniya Abdel Barr

An architect, historian, and researcher specializing in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, especially in Mamluk Egypt and Syria, Dr Abdel Barr works between Cairo and London. She received her bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt, in 2000 and her MSc in the conservation of historic towns and buildings from the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation, KU Leuven, Belgium, in 2004. In 2015, she was awarded her PhD by the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme of Aix-Marseille Université, France, for her thesis on the monuments of Mamluk Cairo and how their construction shaped the city. Since 2011 she has been documenting the destruction of historic Cairo and has actively campaigned to save the city’s architectural and cultural heritage. She joined the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation (EHRF) in 2014 and began fundraising to support its activities and programs, going on to set up the project “Rescuing the Mamluk Minbars of Cairo” (2018–20), funded by the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund, which researched and recorded these important structures and restored a number of them. She has also worked to preserve knowledge of Cairo’s traditional arts and crafts and created the EHRF design centre to study and promote these technical skills. In London, she is the Barakat Trust Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, leading the digitization of the collections of photographs of Islamic architecture taken by Professor K. A. C. Creswell, in collaboration with the American University in Cairo, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and Harvard University. The work will allow Creswell’s important collections to become more accessible to scholars, particularly to Arabic speakers. Dr Abdel Barr has worked on a number of other research and conservation projects, including the restoration of the eastern palace and courtyard of the Bayt al-Razzaz in Cairo (2004–6) with the American Research Center in Egypt. In 2013, for the Danish–Egyptian Dialogue Initiative, she curated Sanduq el-Dunia, an interactive digital display of the Cairo cityscape that was presented at the Images Festival in Copenhagen.

Curator

Dr Saad Al Rashid

Saad Abdul Aziz al-Rashid is a pioneering archaeologist and academic focusing on the Islamic history of Saudi Arabia. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in history from King Saud University, Riyadh in 1969, he studied for a PhD at the University of Leeds, presenting his thesis on Darb Zubaydah—the pilgrim road between Kufa and Makkah—in 1977. Since 1992 he has been a professor in Islamic archaeology at the College of Arts, King Saud University, as well as holding other senior posts at that institution, including chair of the Department of Library and Information Science (1989–90) and chair of the Department of Archaeology and Museology (1994–96). Between 1996 and 2005, he was Deputy Minister for Antiquities and Museums, Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia. A leading scholar of Islamic archaeology in the Arabian Peninsula and wider Islamic world, he has supervised several excavation campaigns in Saudi Arabia and published extensive archaeological research in Arabic and English, both as a sole author and in collaboration with others. His books include Al-Rabadhah: A Portrait of Early Islamic Civilisation in Saudi Arabia (1986), Al-Suwaydira (al-Taraf Qadiman): Atharuha wa Nuqushuha al-Islamiyya (2009)—recording early Islamic inscriptions at the pilgrim station of al-Taraf—and Medieval Routes to Mecca: A Study of the Darb Zubaydah Pilgrim Trail (revised by Peter Webb, 2018). He has participated in a number of academic gatherings, among them the Seminar for Arabian Studies held in London in 2004, where he presented a survey of “The Development of Archaeology in Saudi Arabia.” His work for exhibitions includes editing the catalogue Selected Islamic Inscriptions from Makkah al-Mukarramah and al-Madinah al-Munawwarah (2002). Dr al-Rashid has received several awards in recognition of his work achievements in recording and conserving the heritage of Saudi Arabia, notably the Ameen Madani Award for Research in the History of the Arabian Peninsula in 1998 and the Abdullah Al-Nuaim Award (Archaeology Section) in 2022. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has also conferred on him the Order of King Abdulaziz (First Class), in 1999, and the King Khaled Medal (Third Degree), in 2020.