DUBAI: Haitham Al-Busafi will represent Oman at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia — which runs from May 9 until Nov. 22 — and he will also serve as its curator.
Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, and located in the Arsenale Artiglierie, “Zinah” transforms the tradition of Omani silver horse adornment (Al-zaanah) into a “monumental, participatory environment of sand, suspended metal, and collectively generated sound,” according to a press release.
It added: “The installation repositions Al-zaanah from objects long categorized as craft into a form of enveloping, immersive art. In Omani culture, rider and horse are adorned equally in an act of mutual recognition. Al-zaanah is both a functional and aesthetic object that communicates through pressure and weight, enabling rider and horse to move as one. It is not separate from the rider’s own adornment but its continuation, a cultural refusal to treat the horse as an instrument, and an affirmation that it should be granted the same recognition of worth as the human who rides it.”
Al-Busafi said: “The Al-zaanah taught me that adornment is not about possession or display, it is about recognition. A culture that adorns its horses is a culture that refuses to treat any companion as mere instrument, but as an extension of the self.
“When I began to imagine what it would mean to bring this principle into the space of an exhibition, the question became what happens when the visitor is no longer looking at adornment, but standing inside it? When their weight, their movement, their breath becomes the thing that activates the silver above them? ‘Zinah’ does not explain this tradition. It places you within it. You walk, and the room responds. You are, for the duration of your crossing, the being deemed worthy of beauty.”
The work is also shaped by collective authorship. In a community workshop in Muscat, Oman, artists, students, and members of the public have inscribed marks into the silver forms, each an expression of the bond between human and horse. Over the course of the exhibition, each visitor’s passage will further the work, contributing to an evolving piece.
The work is presented in honor of the memory of Koyo Kouoh, who died in 2025 but whose curatorial vision for the event, “In Minor Keys,” calls for art that refuses spectacle in favor of resonance, and for encounters that are “more sensory than didactic, renewing rather than exhausting.”
