Join us at Hayy Jameel for an exceptional evening featuring a viewing of two new exhibitions, ‘Global Positioning System’ and ‘Red Wind, Coral Worlds’ and the unveiling of the 2026 Hayy Jameel Façade Commission, Awnings Awnings Awnings by Bricklab.

Agenda:

• 7:30-8:15pm | Welcoming remarks by Nora Razian Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and Programmes
  Façade Commission 2026 Conversation with Bricklab: Abdulrahman Gazzaz and Turki Gazzaz, moderated by Yazid Anani Senior Curator at Art Jameel, featuring Architect Zeinab Alireza, Director at Allies and Morrison, Jeddah.
• 8:30-9pm | Conversation with the exhibition curators; Lucas Morin, Senior Curator at Art Jameel, Indranjan Bannerjee Curator at Art Jameel, Huda Tayob, Senior Lecturer at the Royal College of Art and co-awardee of the Red Sea Curatorial Open Call, and Miriam Hillawi Abraham multidisciplinary designer and researcher and co-awardee of the Red Sea Curatorial Open Call. The conversation is moderated by Nora Razian Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and Programmes.

Global Positioning System

Global Positioning System, curated by Indranjan Banerjee and Lucas Morin, is an exhibition dedicated to mapping and navigation systems. It tells stories of fast cars and slow trains, street barriers and trembling grounds, warping highways and broken bridges. Gathering over forty artists across Art Jameel’s two centres in Jeddah and Dubai, the exhibition presents a wide range of artistic practices—from research-based engagements with infrastructure projects to conceptual works that question the very perception of distance. Read more here.

Photography by Daryll Borja of Seeing Things Studio

Lucas Morin is Senior Curator at Art Jameel. His work engages with animals, infrastructure, cities and the politics of emotions. He was previously curator at Bétonsalon — Centre for Art and Research (Paris) and worked at the Sursock Museum (Beirut). He graduated from Sciences Po Paris and Paris-Sorbonne University in Philosophy and Social Sciences. He loves books, cats and public transportation systems.

Indranjan Banerjee is the Curator at Art Jameel, Dubai. He was previously the Senior Curator at Khoj International Artists’ Association, New Delhi. As a curator, writer and cultural producer he often thinks with research based practices that are at the intersection of visual, material and performance cultures. His curatorial research is in the realm of ecology, technology, the body and speculative narratives, which informs his artistic research as well. Experiments in writing, writing in transmission and acts of annotation are his writerly fixations.

Red Wind, Coral Worlds

The upcoming exhibition curated by recipients of the Red Sea Curatorial Open Call, Huda Tayob and Miriam Hillawi Abraham, Red Winds, Coral Worlds sites the Red Sea within an expanded and interconnected oceanic terrain. The exhibition traces the entangled worlds that converge across its waters, attending to the material and affective remnants left in the wake of centuries of movement and migration shaped by trade, pilgrimage, and displacement. Read more here.

Huda Tayob is a South African architectural historian and theorist currently based at the Royal College of Art, UK, having previously taught at the University of Manchester, University of Cape Town, University of Johannesburg and the Bartlett School of Architecture. Her research focuses on minor, migrant and subaltern architectures focused on the African continent, with an interest in archival silences and absences. She was lead curator of the digital pan-African platform (2020 – 2021) Archive of Forgetfulness, a Mellon researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture on the Centring Africa project (2020 – 2022), a Graham Foundation grantee (2022; 2023), and a Vila-Sul fellow (2024). She was a participant in the 18th International Architecture exhibition in Venice (2023) with a project titled Index of Edges, which traces watery archives along east African coasts Cape Town to Port Said.

Miriam Hillawi Abraham is a multi-disciplinary designer from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. With a background in Architecture, she works with digital media and spatial design to interrogate themes of equitable futurism and intersectionality. Abraham’s research interests are concerned with the politics of space as well as technocultures rooted in the African continent. She has worked as the game-code instructor at Bay Area Video Coalition’s youth program for over three years, was a Mellon researcher for the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Digital Now multidisciplinary project, and is currently an artist-in-residence at the Jan Van Eyck Academy. Abraham’s work has been featured in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia as part of the Special Project “Guests from the Future”,  as well the “/imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual” exhibition at the MAK Museum of Applied Arts, the 2nd Sharjah Architecture Triennial and the 14th Shanghai Biennale, “Cosmos Cinema.”

Awnings Awnings Awnings, Hayy Jameel Façade Commission 2026 with Bricklab

Shop awnings are part of the urban memory of historic Jeddah. For decades, they defined the character of commercial streets, attached to shopfronts, filtering sunlight, extending the interior outward, and carving a shaded edge along the sidewalk. Modest in form, unmistakable in presence, their striped fabrics, in bold and contrasting tones, introduced a visual rhythm across storefronts that cut through the brightness of the street and softened the weight of direct light. Bricklab’s Facade Commission design takes this familiar element and shifts its scale. The awning is no longer tied to a single shop. It is expanded, repeated, and assembled across the entire façade of Hayy Jameel; a homage to the rhythm of Jeddah’s commercial frontages. Read more here.

Bricklab is a studio based in Jeddah for architecture, design and experimental research. It navigates the interplay between material research, practical design, and the built environment. Their portfolio—from cultural architecture to urban design and consulting, public space interventions, to scenography and installations—reflects a thoughtful response to the changing contexts of each project. The studio was formed in 2015 by Abdulrahman and Turki Gazzaz. Over the years, their team has expanded to include architects and designers from different backgrounds and interests.

Zeinab Alireza is a Jeddah-based Architect and Placemaking Consultant with over 15 years of international experience in urban design and sustainable environments. As a director and consultant, she specializes in creating vibrant public experiences through large-scale masterplans and spatial visions across the Middle East. Zeinab holds a Master’s degree in Housing and Urbanism and has held leadership roles at firms like AECOM, focusing on the social and environmental opportunities of urban projects. Beyond her extensive experience in urban design, she is a co-founder of the Sustainable Cities Lab for Saudi Women and the founder of Takween, an interdisciplinary educational platform for youth. Her work bridges the gap between professional practice and community development, serving on boards like the Friends of Jeddah Parks to advocate for quality open spaces.