Ad-Diriyah Biennale, the first contemporary art biennial in Saudi Arabia took place between December 2021 and March 2022. The theme of the Biennale was “Feeling the Stones”, in reference to the metaphor of “crossing the river by feeling the stones” popularized by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping at a time of social and economic transformation in the 1980s. As part of its Public Programme, the Biennale offered a number of olfactory engagements, that reflected on the role of scent in the history, identity and culture of the kingdom. Organized by Ashraf Osman, in partnership with OoLa Lab, they included a talk, a series of workshops, and an installation.
The talk aimed to sensitize the audience to the cultural history and significance of scent from Orientalist, New Orientalist/Occidentalist, and Transorientalist perspectives, in an attempt to “re-orient” perfume. More info about the talk can be found in the abstract below.
The workshops focused on identifying and distilling aesthetic portraits of 3 periods in Saudi history and socio-cultural development: Tradition, Modernity, and the Future. Starting with a basic orientation on major olfactory families, participant were invited to share their renderings of the spirit of Saudi Arabia in the 3 phases above, with a focus on the sensorial. The workshops culminated in a scent art installation, Trajectories: Scents of Saudi. You can find out more about it here.
The project was featured in Asharq Al-Awsat, one of the oldest and most influential Arabic newspapers in the region:
Re-Orienting Perfume: A Reconsideration of the “Orient” in Perfumery
From the occidental perspective, the “Orient” features at the beginning of the story of perfumery and almost disappears in its ancient past. As such, the story of perfumery emerges often as a predominantly Western one. In that, the “Orient” features vaguely in certain notes (amber, musk, oud, etc.) and a family of fragrances still referred to, till this day, as “Oriental” (as if Edward Said never existed). For a variety of reasons be examined (including mere commercialism and catering to–or targeting–affluent Arab clientele) oud specifically emerged as a must-have note for Western perfume houses in recent years. In a sense, oud was “Westernized” and reintroduced to Middle Eastern audiences with a slightly different sensibility under Western brands. This can be examined against “local” brands that are oftentimes designed, manufactured, and bottled in Europe. The intermixing of ingredients, technologies, sensibilities and economies embodied in this rich and complex global exchange is in many ways emblematic of a number of the themes of tradition, modernity and globalization being explored in this Biennale.
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