Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — The Ministry of Culture launched the second edition of the "Balad Al-Fann", which includes a series of art exhibitions held in the historic Jeddah area. The event will continue until June 15.

The program includes a memorial exhibition for the late artist Hisham Bnjabi, titled "Memory of the City, the People, and the Nation," held at Naseef Boutique. It celebrates his artistic legacy through audio-visual archives and private collections, exhibited for the first time, documenting his artistic career and his relationship with Jeddah as a city and a memory.

Naseef Boutique is hosting a memorial exhibition for the late artist Safia Binzagr, exploring the region's history through photographs, archives, and artifacts that shed light on Jeddah's social and architectural memory.

The events also include a photography exhibition titled "Texture of Time" at Beit Barghouta, highlighting crafts and visual memory, an experimental exhibition of handicrafts and Arabic calligraphy using contemporary interactive methods, held at Beit Fatima Nawara, and an artist-in-residence exhibition titled "Narratives of Craft" at Beit Shuaib.

The diversity of exhibitions at Balad Al Fann reflects a new creative approach to telling the local story from the heart of historic Jeddah, through the intersection of archival materials, installations, and contemporary images within spaces that respond to the identity of the place and invoke its history as a living source of inspiration.

This year's exhibitions bear the theme "Stories in the Memory of the Place," which highlights the narrative nature of Jeddah's historical experiences and evokes inherited stories as essential components of the region's cultural identity, bringing together oral tradition and contemporary creative expressions.

The "Balad Al Fan" initiative is part of the Ministry of Culture's efforts to revive historic Jeddah as a center for cultural production, enhance community engagement with the region's architectural and human heritage, and stimulate creativity and develop the local cultural economy by supporting talent and providing sustainable exhibition platforms within the historical area.

This will achieve the goals of Vision 2030, which aims to consolidate Saudi Arabia's position on the global cultural map and develop renewable cultural platforms within its heritage sites.