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Sumayya Vally is a South African architect who co-founded the experimental architecture and research firm, Counterspace, in 2015. In 2020, at the age of 30, Vally became the youngest architect ever commissioned to design London’s Serpentine Pavilion. The following year, she was recognized in Time magazine’s list of the 100 Next, as an emerging leader shaping the future. Vally is now organizing the first-ever Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In this event, Vally is reimagining the Hajj Terminal of Jeddah Airport, which usually hosts hundreds of thousands of Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca, as a journey through centuries of Islamic creativity.
In an interview, Vally explained that she felt it was essential to acknowledge that Islamic faith, Islamic practice, and Islamic tradition can and should make a creative contribution to the world. She believes platforms for sharing ideas, such as pavilions and biennales, are incredibly important in how they set the tone for the future and allow us to project our imaginations into those spaces.
Vally sees the significance of a woman, and particularly a young Muslim woman, as the artistic director of this event, as an incredible strength. Her perspective as a woman, an African, and a Muslim is essential to the way she sees the world and the future visions she has for it. She believes that hybridity is an incredible strength, and the biennale foundation team is made up of a cohort of strong women who have cultural overlap with Vally’s background and upbringing.
Regarding the definition of “Islamic art,” Vally believes that existing definitions often focus on style, tradition, geography, pattern, and geometry. However, the ambition of this biennale is to build on and challenge these criteria, expanding on the existing canon of Islamic art and questioning the narrative, museological, and artistic practices of this time. Islamic artworks may have surface similarities, but what really unites them is inherent in how they are made, used, and understood.
The works in the biennale are experiential and put forth an entirely different definition for Islamic art, rooted in the experiential, the oral, the aural, our ritual practices, and the ingredients and infrastructures of gathering and community. For example, Cosmic Breath by Joe Namy choreographs the adhan, or call to prayer, from 18 different locations worldwide. Vally believes that the works curated for this biennale demonstrate that faith is resonant in the artists’ method of practice, regardless of their own faith or background.
Extracted from: https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/04/09/meet-sumayya-vally-the-woman-behind-the-worlds-first-ever-islamic-arts-biennale
