Thirteenth-century maps, first-century incense burners, and new commissions from Yoko Ono and Wael Shawky are coming together in Venice in an exhibition presented by the Saudi Ministry of Culture at the Abbazia di San Gregorio.
Running alongside the city’s Biennale from May 6 through November, the show traces cartography from the medieval period to the present, including early European maps that labelled the Arabian Peninsula as Arabia deserta, placed alongside manuscripts and artifacts from the same era that tell a rather different story about the region’s place in the world.
The premise is that every map is also an argument, a version of the world someone needed you to believe.