Islamic Arts Biennale: Kaaba’s kiswah goes on public display for the first time in Jeddah
From Vatican to the Kaaba: Islamic Arts Biennale marks the public debut of Kaaba’s kiswah in Jeddah, redefines Islamic art to put Saudi Arabia on global art map
The centerpiece of the Islamic Arts Biennale, which opened in Jeddah last week, is as unusual in its conception as in its location. Step into one of the dozens of towering canopies in the Western Hajj Terminal of Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz Airport, and look up: Suspended from the ceiling is one of Islam’s most sacred symbols, the drapery that once adorned the Kaaba in Mecca.

Known as the Kiswah, it is made of black silk and embroidered with passages from the Koran in gold thread. For centuries, the Kaaba — the cube-shaped building that draws the faithful from all over the world —has been sheathed with a new Kiswah every year during the Hajj pilgrimage. The old one is usually put away in a warehouse; sometimes, it is divided into sections for the Saudi government to give as gifts.
Putting last year’s Kiswah on display as a work of art for public viewing is a striking departure from the norm. It’s the first time a full Kiswah has been showcased in its entirety, and something that possibly may not be repeated, said Farida Alhusseini, director of the biennale. The experience is intended to “inspire awe and a sense of humbleness about our place as humans in the world.”
The drapes are among more than 500 other pieces —including a giant Koran, ancient artifacts on loan from the Vatican and contemporary works constructed out of oil barrels, sticks and sheets —at the biennale, which will run through May 25. This is the second iteration, mounted on an exponentially larger scale thanthe first, in 2023.
Although this year’s Hajj doesn’t start until early June,the show will be accessible to Muslims traveling through Jeddah en route to Mecca for the year-round pilgrimage known as Umrah —and to tourists visiting increasingly popular destinations like AlUla or the Red Sea coast. More than 600,000 visited the Islamic Arts Biennale two years ago. Theorganizers expect at least that many again this year.
For attendees, the Jeddah biennale is an opportunity to view the high points of creativity and culture across Islamic civilization. There are museums devoted to Islamic art in places like Cairo, Istanbul and Doha, but the biennale is a very different form of cultural outreach, bringing art to the people —and especially to the faithful —rather than the other way around. For Saudi Arabia, where public displays of art were rare even a decade ago, it is a chance to catch up with those other cultural centers of the Islamic world, with a show that draws extra legitimacy from the fact that it is taking place so close to the birthplace of the faith.
“It shows that Saudi Arabia, a country which 10 or 15 years ago was not known to have a cultural scene, is today able to launch and stage major large-scale cultural projects that are second to none in quality,” said Amin Jaffer, one of the artistic directors of the biennale. “It has arrived on the cultural scene.”
It is also another opportunity to showcase the sweeping transformation taking place in the kingdom under its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS. Much of the messaging around this transformation has been directed at Western and liberal audiences: Rock concerts in Riyadh challenge the kingdom’s traditional reputation for extreme conservatism.
But the biennale speaks to a very different constituency. The majority of pilgrims come to Jeddah from countries in the global south, many from traditional societies. For many, the biennale will be their first experience of MBS’s new Saudi Arabia. The exhibition, says Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, who is its curator of contemporary art, brings objects of Islamic antiquity “in proximity with, and conversation with, contemporary thinking.”
The juxtaposition was not lost on early visitors to the exhibition. “Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have had this very long ago,” said Zainab Anwar, a 25-year-old artist from Pakistan who visited the biennale with her mother the day after it opened. “This is a mix of art that’s never been seen and a way to use their roots as an advantage to promote tourism.”
Anwar spoke while viewing an installation of seven columns that once surrounded the place of ritual worship around the Kaaba. Her mother, Shabana, was particularly interested in the collection of Korans from countries including Egypt, Morocco, Spain and Turkey.
Nearby, at an outdoor garden shielded from the sun by canopies, where faint sounds of distant airplane engines serve as background noise for viewers of abstract and contemporary works, one Saudi woman spoke of the cultural stereotypes still to be overcome.
“Some people get the wrong idea about us, that we are not welcoming or having hospitality,” said Ulaa AlHaddad, a 28-year old from Jeddah who is studying computer science. She hopes the biennale will show visitors “how we are thinking about the new era of Saudi.”
Back inside where the Kiswah hangs, visitors crane their necks up and seem deeply focused on the drapes. For non-Muslims like myself, this may be the closest we will come to the deep emotion that a walk around the Kaaba evokes in millions of pilgrims every year. The contemplative, even reverential silence that descends on all of us under the canopy feels perfectly natural.
