Aridly Abundant

Curated by Faysal Tabbarah.

The National Pavilion UAE announces the details of its participation in the Biennale Architettura 2023, where it will exhibit a body of research titled Aridly Abundant, curated by Faysal Tabbarah, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Architecture at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at American University of Sharjah.

The exhibition will consider how arid environments can be spaces of abundance by exploring architectural possibilities within arid landscapes in the UAE’s desert plateau, wadis, and coastal plains within Al Hajar Mountain range and its environs. The exhibition will focus on integrating land-based practices in architecture with contemporary technology, displaying themes, lessons and questions based on learnings from the UAE’s arid landscape. It will consider how these practices can be shared with other territories around the world facing the threat of aridity and desertification, including countries across Africa, Asia, and Southern Europe.

Aridly Abundant will transform the pavilion’s space at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia into an environment that exhibits the spatial, material, and tactical qualities of arid environments, creating a backdrop for architectural provocations suited for future global arid contexts; thus responding to the Biennale Architettura 2023’s theme, The Laboratory of the Future, curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, educator and best-selling novelist, Lesley Lokko.

The exhibition, which focuses on the relationship between architecture and arid landscapes, challenges the perception of arid environments as scarcity spaces by uncovering ongoing arid land-based practices that rethink mainstream material practices, while highlighting aridity within architectural production and discourse provokes a future built in, with, and for aridity.

Accompanying the exhibition, this year’s publication, conceived as a travelogue, will advocate a change in the way we look at aridity by exploring it as a concept; a dynamic condition which can be a state of mind, a practice, or a shared identity. The publication will be taking the seemingly arid landscapes of the UAE as a case study that allows us to declare aridity as a shared and common cultural space through diverse pieces—fiction and poetry, scientific essays, travel stories and photography. The book is co-edited by Faysal Tabbarah and Meitha Almazrooei. Almazrooei is a PhD student in History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduate of Columbia University and founder of WTD Magazine.

Aridly Abundant exhibition is scheduled to be presented at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia from May 20 to November 26, 2023 (pre-opening May 18 and 19) in Venice, Italy. 2023 marks the UAE’s twelfth exhibition at the International art and architecture Exhibitions organized by La Biennale di Venezia since 2009, and its fifth participation in the International Architecture Exhibition.

The National Pavilion UAE is commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and supported by the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth, with a permanent pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia’s Arsenale – Sale d’Armi.

For press enquiries: Brunswick Arts, NPUAE@brunswickgroup.com.