About Jeddah from 1938-1963

Since the discovery of oil in Dammam Well No.7 in 1938, Jeddah witnessed an unprecedented urban development boom. It culminated in the UN brokered masterplan study of Abdulrahman Makhlouf in 1963, which outlined the primary structure of the city as we know it today. In the face of these early notions of modernization across most sectors of civic life, society began to develop a critical attitude towards the ideological repercussions of these western development models.


The collective sense of polarization between tradition and modernization which started during this period has yet to settle until today.


This exhibition sets out to investigate developments in Jeddah’s built environment in the context of wider shifts in its political, socio-economic, and cultural landscapes. The narrative of the exhibition unfolds in two parts. The first part documents key moments in urbanism and architecture to reconstruct fragments of the rapidly evolving city. Drawing on this research, a group of seven artists and architects were engaged to develop a series of works responding to this transitional period.  Through their series of installations, they establish a cross-disciplinary framework to critically assess the modern history of the city as it relates to contemporary issues of place, identity, and collective memory.