Fragments of Folklore, currently on view in Riyadh’s JAX District, is entering its final week. The exhibition closes on May 12, 2025, offering visitors a last chance to see works that explore cultural identity through contemporary interpretations of folkloric tradition.
The exhibition features artists Hamra Abbas, Lulwah Al Homoud, Rashid Al Khalifa, and Raeda Ashour, each of whom engages with inherited forms—geometry, calligraphy, materiality, and abstraction — to reinterpret and re-contextualise folkloric elements through modern visual language, all while exploring the contradictions and similarities between tradition and reinvention.
Their works honour the past while boldly assuming their place in the present. Folklore, in this context, is treated not as an unchanging object or merely a narrative but as an evolving archive of identity shaped by time and geography.
The exhibition coincides with the country’s ongoing Vision 2030 cultural reform programme and presents a moment in which the role of folklore is reconsidered not as a fixed narrative of the past but as a living archive shaped by geographic movement and time. The artworks explore how inherited symbols and aesthetics are transmitted, altered, or contested in the present.
The exhibition is a collaborative effort between THAA (Saudi Arabia), MIR’A Art (Paris/Middle East), and TRIYAD (Belgium), marking a cross-regional partnership that brings together local and international perspectives on art and heritage.
As the exhibition enters its final week, Fragments of Folklore invites viewers to consider how fragments of the past are continuously reassembled in the present.
Location: The exhibition is held at Riyadh’s JAX District,
Date: on view until May 12, 2025.