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The second edition of Jeddah Art Week and some thought-provoking artwork by female Saudi artists brought focus to the countrys ongoing art expos.
BY SINDHU NAIR

The Saudi Art Spring

THE STATIC of the telephone lines couldnt hide Lina Lazaar Jameels enthusiasm for Saudis ongoing art revolution. She was not just involved in Jeddah Art Week (JAW) on a professional level as the international contemporary art specialist at Sothebys, organizers of JAW, but on a personal level, too, with her husbands family known to be pioneers of art in the country. Backed by Saudi Arabias Ministry of Culture and Information and the Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives charity, Lazaar had drawn together a wideranging and sometimes edgy program of events, encompassing 13 exhibitions. I spoke to her a few days after Jeddah Art Week, but the excitement in her voice over an event that had stimulated some sentiments in the rigid Islamic country was palpable. In its second year since inception, JAW had aims to nurture grass roots movements, whilst opening up its horizons to the global contemporary art family, says Lazaar. We are aware of the constraints in the country; hence the success of this years JAW was overwhelming. With the help of JAW we helped address numerous social taboos, but most importantly, art became much more accessible to the public, says Lazaar. Art was always meant for the elite in Saudi, but with this years participation we could touch and affect the general public. And that to me was the real reason of the success of JAW and the art movement here. The contemporary art scene in the Middle East is

taking a completely new direction, with museums being dedicated to this newest form of art, and my brush with contemporary artists in the region was through Qatari artist Ali Hassan, who touched various streams with his work in calligraphy with forms and colors playing an integral role. But the work that truly evoked shock at its intensity was Manal Al Dowayans larger-than-life prayer beads, decorated with the names of individual, anonymous women. This installation, Al Dowayan says, is the only method of getting to know a womans name in a society that largely ignores this powerful set of voices that are now being heard above the cacophony of restrictions through their art. Al Dowayan is currently involved in a different kind of project, one that refuses to be contained in the sphere of art as we know it. She is transforming Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Arts Project Space into a temporary artists studio. Over the course of the two-month project, Al Dowayan will open this studio to the public, unfolding the process and materials of her research on the frequent car accidents that take the lives of female schoolteachers in Saudi Arabia. These are women traveling long distances to teaching positions in villages far from their homes. Poorly paid and restricted from driving themselves by the government, they often pool funds to travel in groups, putting their lives in the hands of unreliable drivers and vehicles.

THE REVOLUTION Clockwise from top left: The Jeddah Art Week brought to The Kingdom for the first time a Damien Hirst work; Maha Mulluh's work is exhibited at JAW; Lina Lazar is one of the important figures in Saudi's art movement. Below, from top: Abdulnasser Gharem "Flora & Fauna" 148x209 cm, "Dark Side" both important works of art from JAW.

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T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

WORK ON ART Anticlockwise from far right; work of art by Nja Mohdaoui Ikhtilej; another exhibit at JAW by Mohdaoui and Maqam Essafa; Manal Al Dowayan gestures to the data she has collected of the dead Saudi teachers, which is occuping the project space at Mathaf.

If you are looking out for art installations, then be prepared to be disappointed because this is a work in progress, a work that makes you look beyond art and at stark realities. The walls of Mathafs project space are plastered with information on each of these car crashes; running videos show a presentation of women reenacting short clips from the lives of the dead women teachers; and the center table is piled with all the books that have helped Al Dowayan in her research. And it is around this table that we (Al Dowayan and Mathaf Director Dr. Abdellah Karroum) sat to talk about the issue that the artist had researched. Al Dowayans research through art brings in different layers, some of them deeply disturbing, throwing light on Saudis near-medieval-to-backward beliefs of discounting the power of women in society by ignoring them completely. The deaths of these women are not registered, nor are there any names of the dead women. It seems as if there is a forced disappearance, almost as if they do not matter and what matters is just the numbers of dead, says Al Dowayan. And after a while, the numbers have no effect. You become numb to it. These women are dehumanized. But if these forms of art have a shocking and depressive touch what is encouraging is that, because of these voices of art, an art revolution is in the making in Saudi Arabia. But it is not a recent one, reminds Al Dowayan. Saudi had a strong art background. Its modern artists were in the scene since the 60s, she says. What has happened now, is that, the younger generation (more than 50% of the Saudi population is below the age of 21) is using this as a new medium for communication. A small but strong form of support for art is being seen. Three years back there were no art

galleries in the country, and now there are a few scattered in Jeddah. Al Dowayan, an artist from the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, had to show her first exhibition in Bahrain. The first ripple of change was when Edge of Arabia was formed, she says. Edge of Arabia was founded in March 2003 by British artist Stephen Stapleton with Saudi artists Ahmed Mater and Abdulnasser Gharem in the mountains of southwestern Saudi Arabia and is now an internationally recognizedplatform for dialogue and exchange between the Middle East and Western world. Now there is some sort of movement; there are a few full-time artists, says Al Dowayan. The lower Gulf region has also helped in the art movement. The Sharjah Biennial, Art Dubai and the sprouting of close to 50 galleries in Dubai and museums in Abu Dhabi and Qatar have also helped bring the focus on artists in the region. Another artist who showed during the Jeddah Art Week was Maha Mulluh with both a solo show at the Selma Feriani Gallery and a group show with six contemporary Saudi artists at Ayyam Gallery. She is equally vocal about this change. It is with such powerful art dialogues that Saudis are trying to break perceptions even if its political direction on foreign policy is going askew, she says. She also agrees that what is happening today is really a big achievement, something that none of us dreamed of a few years ago. Who would have believed a mere 20 years ago that Saudi Arabian artists would be in major international collections and that they would have group and solo exhibitions both at home and abroad, she asks. But it is important to be critical, too. Is this enough for an art market to grow? Are the youth encouraged enough to choose a career in art? And if they do, what careers do they have other than being an artist? We need to realize that it is the market that has dictated and controlled this growth. Now, what we need to do is focus on the pedagogy and the academic aspect of this wonderful cultural sprouting, points out Mulluh. We have galleries, yes, but we also need more national museums. Our universities need to respond to the change in cultural developments. We need to offer degrees in Art History and Fine Art where aesthetic theories are read, where other artistic movements can be studied and where there can be a platform for intellectual debate and discussion. Our libraries need to be stocked with material to facilitate the exchange of ideas, for our society to have an archive to refer to. Without the aid of academia, there is the fear that art in our region will become only a commodity. We have come a long way, but there is still much to be done.

PICTURES COURTESY AMMAR NASEEF, ROBERT A

March-April 2014

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