The Waves Won’t Stop When You Leave

The Waves Won’t Stop When You Leave, 2019Three months long outdoors exhibition in Jeddah_Albalad

Curating SaudiStreetArt

‘The Waves Won’t Stop When You Leave’ is a street art exhibition, part of an Artist-led initiative titled ‘Private/Public’; sponsored by The Ministry of Culture and the Saudi Art Council.

Street art in its various shapes and forms can be noticed across the country, whether it features poetic or social statements, group tags, or beautiful murals; this type of visual outcome is an individualistic form of expression and a form of social commentary. Oscillating between art and vandalism, this nomadic form of visual output utilises the public space of the city as its backdrop. Street artists’ engagement with their physical surroundings reflects a personal relationship with the city, its walls, and the public.

This exhibition aims to unpack the complex network of relationships between the artists, their physical environment, and the society that have come to shape the phenomenon of street art in Saudi Arabia.

By capitalising on the format of an exhibition, street art and the subculture driving it becomes central to further our understanding of this form of visual expression as a tool to question and reflect on broader patterns of social behaviour which is framed and supported by the physical structure of our cities.

Throughout the research process for “The Waves Won’t Stop When You Leave” a set of questions kept recurring, such as why street artists are drawn to neglected, old and isolated spaces to tag or mark? What is the relationship between people and the walls within their surrounding environment? How can we understand street art as a medium for communication? The exhibition aims to address these questions through the commissioned works as well as highlighting existing street art around Al-Balad and its surrounding neighbourhoods.

Central to the curation of this exhibition is a commitment to honour and respect the community, to be inclusive in the process of curation and its outcome, and to commission artists who would create community aware street art that is focused on the understanding of the space and the context of Al-Balad.