DISCOURSE SPIRITUAL UNIFICATION THROUGH ART.

The Islamic Arts Biennale's theme of Awwal Bait refers to the reverence and symbolic unity evoked by the Kaaba in Mecca, the centre of Islamic rituals.

A big part of what this biennale aims to demonstrate is that Islamic practice is rooted in collective rituals and experiences of community and belonging. I believe platforms like this have a role to play in understanding the profound cultural and artistic heritages around us alongside nurturing and promoting understanding between communities.

It is not often that the opportunity comes along for artists to fully immerse themselves in work that is expressly Islamic, or rooted in its rituals, philosophies and practices. In highlighting the diversity of Islamic ways of being, participating African artists contribute to the many notions of what Islam is and can be.

I interpreted the entrance area in the Hajj Terminal of Jeddah's King Abdulaziz International Airport as a reception area for the world - what the city and the site has always been. It's the gateway to hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage, and the terminal is able to accommodate up to 80,000 pilgrims. For the biennale, it contains an array of contemporary and older artefacts associated with those who service pilgrims.

The world's first Islamic Arts Biennale shines a light on African artists incorporating Islamic motifs in their work

From there visitors move to the indoor galleries. Their principal theme is that of the sacred direction [qiblah] to which Muslims point in prayer five times a day, every day of the year. The focus of those rituals is the Kaaba in Mecca. It describes the construction of our daily spiritual belonging.

Starting in a dimly lit room and ending in a brightly lit space, viewers go on a journey from darkness to light. The works on display build upon each other in terms of scale. From the call to prayer - a sound on the vibrational scale - to the scale of the limbs and the body in prayer, to bodies in a gathering - both in life and death. The climax of the exhibition is the scale of infinity - the door of the Kaaba itself. The works include sound installations, ancient artefacts, religious manuscripts, photographic works and diverse contemporary installations ranging in scale.

In the outside space, within the hijrah (migration) theme of the biennale, the works reflect on the construction of home and belonging no matter where we are in the world - the building blocks of community created through our rituals of food...