After Rain - Book Launch

Join us for a book launch of "After Rain, Visual Reader of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024" with Ute Meta Bauer, DCAB 2024 Artistic Director and the book's editor alongside DCAB 2024 artists and architects who are participating in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale or in collateral events.

Highlighting the multiple collaborations between artists from many parts of the world and local experts from Saudi Arabia—preservation specialists, farmers, botanists, craftspeople, architects, musicians and chefs—the visual reader of "After Rain", is a richly illustrated compendium of the artistic processes and research practices that led up to the making of the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. The image-driven volume conveys the range and vitality of different artistic approaches and is showing how artist commissions and communally driven works interact with the context of a fast-changing Saudi Arabia.

Keyword entries annotate the image material provided by artists depicting their studios, fieldwork, and on-site experiences and presentations, underscoring the core themes of this biennale edition. The book also offers a photographic walk-through of the exhibition and provides an insight to the Biennale Encounters, a year-long series of talks, workshops, performances, and poetry readings, the biennale's film program and the online Learning Garden. Envisioned as an open-ended glossary, pedagogical resource, and memory archive, the book positions the Biennale not as a finished product, but as a living framework for reflection, future dialogue, and ongoing exchange within a rapidly shifting cultural ecosystem.

The second edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (February 20 to May 24, 2024) was led by Artistic Director Ute Meta Bauer and Co-curators Rose Lejeune, Wejdan Reda, Anca Rujoiu, and Ana Salazar Herrera as well as Adjunct Curator Rahul Gudipudi. "After Rain" brought together more than 100 artists of diverse backgrounds who investigate the relationship between humans and nature, examine the built environment, observe and interact with the landscapes that surround us, recount histories, and encourage us to listen more closely. Conceived as a vibrant entity rather than a static framework, the Biennale’s multi-format platforms consisted of an exhibition, the Biennale Encounters series of public programs, a film program, performances, research projects, and dialogues. The Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale takes place in the dedicated arts neighborhood of the JAX District in Diriyah, a town on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, encompassing the UNESCO World Heritage Site At-Turaif.

Ute Meta Bauer, Professor in the School of Art, Design and Media, and Senior Principal Research Fellow at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, both Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

bahraini—danish, architectural office using cross-cultural references, bridging new forms for furniture, objects, and installations, Manama / Copenhagen.

Bricklab, studio for architecture, design and experimental research, Jeddah.

Rachaporn Choochuey, design director of all(zone), a group of Bangkok-based design professionals.

Alexander Eriksson Furunes, architect, who together with a Sudar Khadka created mutualsupport, Trondheim / Manila.

Armin Linke, artist, Berlin and Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

Liam Young, filmmaker and speculative architect, Coordinator of the Masters in Fiction & Entertainment at SCI Arc in Los Angeles