Art Jameel’s new centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is set to welcome visitors from the winter of 2021. Art Jameel’s slogan for its latest initiative is From Jeddah to Jeddah: a laconic tagline in a region of firsts and bests. Hayy Jameel, the Kingdom’s dedicated home for the arts, is designed by multi-award-winning architectural studio waiwai and conceived as a dynamic, creative, community hub.
Hayy Jameel will be a 17,000-square-metre cultural complex in the northern area of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It comprises a 700-square-metre exhibition space curated by Art Jameel (Hayy Arts), as well as a 200-seat cinema (Hayy Cinema), a multipurpose performance and workshops space (Fenaa Hayy), studio spaces (Hayy Studios) and space for other creative businesses (Hayy Residents).
The plan to set up Hayy Jameel was the idea of what was needed in Jeddah a city with a longstanding arts scene but few permanent spaces in which to view, make or talk about art. Instead of just being a museum site for Art Jameel’s collection, the foundation conceives of Hayy as a place of discourse and production.
That emphasis on critical thinking also shows itself in the first show – or round of programming – that will launch with Hayy when it opens at the end of this year. Looking at food as a resource under duress and as a cultural product that unites various cultures, the Art Jameel team has put together Staple: What’s on Your Plate? with its frequent collaborator, the Delfina Foundation in London.
The programme, running from November to April 2022, will take stock of the different culinary traditions followed by Jeddah’s diverse populations, for whom food is not only sustenance but also a source of memory and communality.
In a similar spirit, the educational platform Hayy Learning will also focus on training curators, artists and art scholars in researching and thinking about art discourse, particularly in Arabic.
While Hayy Jameel has been delayed, mostly because of the coronavirus pandemic, its launch at the end of 2021 allows it to coincide with the 75th birthday of the Art Jameel Foundation, created by the late Abdul Latif Jameel.
Now mostly known in the art world for the Jameel Arts Centre, Art Jameel has been one of the region’s longest-standing foundations, installing major works of modern sculpture throughout Jeddah in the 1970s, funding the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and supporting traditional craft practices through teaching and apprenticeship programmes in Jeddah and Cairo.