Biennials of the Arab world

The Arab world was one of the first regions outside the West to utilize the biennial format to present its own artists to a global audience. In 1955, the Alexandria Biennale was founded in Egypt to link the multiple modernities of the Arab art scene with the avant-garde in Europe. Since then, the Arab world can look back on a multitude of various biennials, which differ greatly from one another, not only in terms of space and time. What they all have in common, however, is that they have deconstructed the nationalist modes of operation of Western biennials and turned to a cross-border trans-Arabism ideology. This chapter is devoted to this phenomenon, exploring where and how trans-Arabism emerged and was instrumentalized at biennials, and when nationalist narratives were used instead. Tracing the origins of the Alexandria Biennale, the chapter continues with examining the biennials in Kuwait, Baghdad, Rabat, Cairo, Sharjah, Saudi Arabia and Palestine, before venturing into the future of biennials in the Arab world.