16 September 2026 — 31 March 2027
Along the Way
Mapping Journeys Through Space, Memory, and Experience
Movement is more than physical relocation. It unfolds across time — along roads and coastlines, through skies, screens and shared spaces — as a way of knowing that engages both mind and body, shaped by the ties that bind people to one another and by the experiences they carry and transform along the way. Drawing on the legacy of great journeys such as those of the 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta, Along the Way brings together more than 34 artists and 69 artworks and objects at Misk Art Institute’s Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall in Riyadh, under the premise that movement is both physical and intellectual, outward and inward. Travel here carries a spiritual resonance: a passage through which the self is unsettled and remade, where every threshold holds the possibility of renewal. The works span painting, photography, sculpture, installation, textiles and digital practices, alongside archival material and rare manuscripts — among them a copy of al-Sufi’s Book of Fixed Stars, al-Qazwini’s Nuzhat al-Qulub with its circular world map, and an engraved astronomical disc from Persia. Across them, movement unfolds through landscape, language, memory, cosmology, bodies in transition and histories in motion, with themes ranging from maps and how we draw them to wayfinding, emotional maps and nature as a living map. At its core, the exhibition asks what it means to know through movement. Cartography becomes both subject and method: routes fold back on themselves, and space is reimagined as an affective cartography of subjective experience and emotional life, extending into a poetic cartography grounded in the mythical and the topological rather than in fixed geometric coordinates. Arranged as a series of crossings rather than a linear progression, the exhibition invites visitors to pause and reorient themselves, so that each gesture, image and archival fragment becomes a coordinate in an expanding map of perception — and every outward journey turns inward toward recognition and understanding. Participating artists include modern pioneers and leading contemporary voices from Saudi Arabia, the Arab world, South Asia and Africa: Abduladeem Shali, Abdulla Almuharraqi, Anju Dodiya, Anuar Khalifi, Asmaa Aljohani, Asma Bahmim, Basmah Felemban, Dia al-Azzawi, Fahad Hawari, Filwa Nazer, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Hassan Meer, Hatem Al-Ahmad, Hayfa Algwaiz, Houda Terjuman, Jaffar Aloraibi, Laurent Mareschal, Madhawi AlGwaiz, Manal AlDowayan, Marwa AlMugait, Marwan Rechmaoui, Moath Alofi, Mohamed Amine Hamouda, Mohammad Siam, Mona Saudi, Rabia Akhtar, Reem Al Faisal, Sara Alabdali, Sara Almutlaq, Safeya Binzagr, Tewodros Hagos, Zahiyah Alraddadi and Ziad Dalloul. Entry is free with online booking.
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