When Jazz Meets the Middle East

To tell the story of jazz, it is not enough to follow the route from New Orleans to Chicago and New York. There is another geography - less familiar, yet equally significant - shaped by migration, cultural encounters and mutual influences that crossed the Atlantic and reached as far as the Middle East. It is this alternative history that Saudi artist Sultan Bin Fahad explores in Blue Note, the new exhibition at Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai. The exhibition takes the form of an immersive installation combining paintings, beaded textile works, texts, archival materials and site-specific interventions. Rather than reconstructing a chronological history of jazz, the project examines the emergence of this musical language as a cultural phenomenon, highlighting its relationship with memory, spirituality, community and the profound social transformations of the twentieth century. Born in Riyadh in 1971, Sultan Bin Fahad is one of the leading figures in contemporary Saudi art. His multidisciplinary practice - spanning painting, sculpture and installation - reinterprets the material culture of Saudi Arabia through objects, archives and fragments of collective memory, creating an ongoing dialogue between history and the present. His works are now held in major collections, including that of the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. For Blue Note, the artist focuses on the period when jazz emerged as a powerful new form of collective expression. Drawing on historical documents and oral testimonies, Bin Fahad reveals that jazz was far more than a musical language: it was a meeting place for diverse identities, a communal practice, and a space where experiences of emancipation, spirituality and resistance became deeply intertwined.