Exploring Archival Practices at Diriyah Biennale’s Research Room
RIYADH — Archiving Saudi Arabia’s art history has become a central focus of the local cultural scene. This week, the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale highlights those efforts with a four-day Research Room event running from April 22 to 25.
Titled “Timekeepers: The Archive in Flux,” the symposium brings together artists and researchers from around the world to explore the relationship between art and everyday life through a multidisciplinary approach. Daily panel discussions cover working with fragments in archiving, oral histories and storytelling, digital-age archiving, and the question of whose memory matters.
The program also includes film screenings, workshops, film archiving and negative scanning, listening sessions, and masterclasses. It concludes with a showcase of the biennale’s micro-residency participants’ research works.
Sybel Vazquez, director of public programs at the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, told Arab News that Saudi Arabia has undergone a massive cultural shift in recent years. “This is an extremely urgent time to not necessarily relish in the past, but to think about what it is that we keep,” she said.
She noted that the first Research Room edition last year brought the community together across ages. “How do they engage with this notion in their everyday — from photographs to storytelling, even to recipe-keeping, to what gets told from mother to daughter to grandchild,” Vazquez added. “What are all these beautiful stories that will be lost if we don’t pay attention?”
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