For the second year in a row, the Jeddah Art Week (JAW) has been a successful event, exhibiting more than 50 different works of art made by local, regional and internationally celebrated artists.
The event kicked off on Feb. 1, with a turnout of more than 12,000 during its six-day run.
The event was held under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and Information and the Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives.
The Saudi Society for Culture and Arts, in collaboration with Sotheby’s, Edge of Arabia Projects and Arabian Wings, intend to build on the success of last year’s inaugural event, which saw 1,500 people attend.
On display was one of the biggest calligraphy and graffiti pieces made by Tunisian calligrafitti artist, Elseed.
The artist used a Saudi poem and different shades of pink spray paint and worked his magic on one of the old buildings located on the Jeddah downtown area.
Hundreds of Jeddawis attended the event.
“I used the help of five Saudi street artists to help me with filling the color. My main goal is to to inspire them to go bigger and I want to tutor them. This is my way of giving back to the community,” he said. “This, to me, is more interesting than the project itself,” he said.
The audience also attended the unveiling of Jeddah’s open-air museum on the same day. The initiative was launched by Abdul Latif Jameel Community and the Jeddah Municipality, which worked hand in hand to restore the sculptures that dot the waterfront in a bid to improve the visual ambience of Jeddah’s Corniche.
The sculptures include the works of famous artist Henry Moore (UK), Victor Vazarelly and Cesar Baldicini (France), Joan Miro (Spain), Alexander Calder (US) and Jane ARB (Germany), and Arab artists, including Mustafa Sunbul (Egypt) and Rabia Al-Akhras (Syria). The sculptures have been around since the 1980s.
The second day marked the grand opening of JAW 2014 at the Park Hyatt Al-Furusiyah, which featured 12 different exhibitions.
Kakaibang Jeddah, Filipino for “unique Jeddah,” stole the spotlight with their work, which was made by the Filipino community living in Jeddah.
The photography exhibition showcased photos taken around Jeddah, where 15 Filipino photographers exhibited their work for the first time to the public. Even the minister of Labor praised their artistic talent. “I was pleasantly surprised with the various artwork that was presented by Filipino workers. I think it is one of the things that we should work on more,” Fakeih said.
“We want to encourage our guest workers to share their experiences living in Saudi cities and encourage cultural interaction with our society,” he said.
He said this would enrich their lives. “This is a step in the right direction and the Ministry of Labor is going to further encourage various communities to participate in Saudi Arabia’s cultural activities.”
Khalid Zahid hosted his first solo exhibition entitled “I Dream Kingdom,” with five different art pieces that expresses the artist’s opinion about social issues in Saudi Arabia. “It reflects what I see happening in Saudi Arabia in the future. I see a better and positive direction with the Saudi labor force and women rights, including women driving,” he said.
“JAW combines very strong international galleries and artists with local talents and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to launch my first solo exhibition,” he added.
Another solo exhibition that caught the eyes of the audience was the work by Wasma Mansour titled Single Saudi Women, which is an ongoing photographic study of single Saudi women living in London. It is an interrogation of the stereotypical representation of women from her native country.
Artist and writer Saad Bin Mohammed contributed to JAW with a piece entitled “heaven is a state of mind, only freedom proves it.”
The artwork is part of a collection called “rebelling heaven.”
“In this specific painting, I’m saying heaven is just a state of mind that only freedom proves it. This man in the painting is standing in his own heaven with his knowledge and his wisdom, which is what the awl represents, and he is giving his back to his own heaven seeking freedom,” he said.
“I am associating freedom with heaven; there is no absolute freedom unless there is heaven. The mirrors are there to emphasize the main concept of the painting for you to put yourself in his shoes. If you find your freedom, you are in heaven,” he added.
JAW also presented Sotheby’s Exhibition Highlights from its upcoming contemporary art auction in Doha, including works by Ali Bandisadr, Jannane Al Ani, Mounir Fatmi, Damian Hirst, Hayv Kahraman, and Khalil Rabah.
The third day began early, where Dar Al-Hekma University and Ibraaz, an online publishing forum initiated by the Kamel Lazaar Foundatio, hosted a one-day conference on contemporary art and its historical development.
There was an international gathering of speakers that looked at the background behind contemporary art and its global development, specifically in the MENA region. The five-hour conference discussed markets for contemporary art, collecting art and the development of new institutions across the MENA region.
All discussions were chaired by Dr. Anthony Downey, director of the Master’s Program in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, and Lina Lazaar, founder of JAW and deputy director and international contemporary art specialist at Sotheby’s London.
That same day, the audience moved to the Ayyam Gallery to attend the “Contemporary Kingdom,” an exhibition of six contemporary Saudi Arabian artists. Spanning three generations, each artist in the show was specifically featured for their creative dynamism and consistent development in pushing the boundaries of contemporary and conceptual art in Saudi Arabia. In “Contemporary Kingdom,” Faisal Samra, Maha Malluh, Abdulnasser Gharem, Rashed Al Shashai, Shaweesh and Huda Beydoun exhibited artworks addressing, as well as embodying, the spirit of rapid modernity and its impact on Saudi Arabia.
Day number four of JAW was a celebration of Saudi Art at Al Alamia Gallery and then Abdulaziz Bube Asher solo exhibition, Saudi art center that was curated by Arabian Wings gallery north Jeddah.
On the fifth day, Jeddawis went to Palestine street to see the Saudi colors exhibition at the house of artists. They also attended Shift, a new perspective at the Dama art gallery.
On its final day, the JAW audience attended a miniature and contemporary art event from the Middle East at Rochane Gallery.
The art week ended with the Al-Corniche exploration, art and culture association.
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Jeddah Art Week — a blend of local and international talents
Jeddah Art Week — a blend of local and international talents
From Japan to Saudi Arabia, teamLabs Borderless promises immersive experience in Jeddah
DUBAI: From the heart of Tokyo to Jeddah’s Historic District, teamLab Borderless museum is set to open its doors in Saudi Arabia on June 10.
Arab News spoke to teamLab Borderless founder Toshiyuki Inoko ahead of the opening to learn more about his hopes for the new space.
Inoko said the newest location in Jeddah, the first outpost in the Middle East, will feature more than 80 artworks.
“Each one of (the) artworks are not independently displayed but they are interrelated and they influence each other … our artwork is fluid and has no borders, hence the name borderless,” Inoko said.
The Jeddah museum features four main sections: Athletics Forest, Future Park, Forest of Lamps and EN TEA HOUSE.
“Once you enter our doors, you walk through a world that is changing endlessly. As you explore further, you enjoy the process of transformation through the artwork,” he explained.
As for its location, Inoko commented that Jeddah’s past is a key factor in why the city is the ideal location for teamLabs Borderless.
“Jeddah is strongly historical and it is rare to see and touch traces of history and Jeddah is one of those rare places where this happens. We think it's going to be very meaningful for people to create a modern experience in such a strong historical context. We hope to capture the journey between the past and the future,” he said.
Inoko hopes that visitors will enjoy the immersive aspect of the museum.
“At our museum, you as a visitor have the power to influence the art with your physical body … we are hoping to challenge the notion of beauty by showing how it can be everchanging and we hope it can also influence the way people look at the world,” he said.
Singer CMAT withdraws from Latitude Festival over Gaza
DUBAI: Irish pop singer Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, who goes by the artist name CMAT, this week withdrew from the UK’s Latitude Festival in protest against the event’s sponsorship by Barclays Bank.
Campaigners allege that Barclays has increased its investments in arms companies that trade with Israel.
Her decision follows the withdrawal of over 100 artists from The Great Escape festival in Brighton in May, in protest over the bank’s involvement with that festival.
Bands Boycott Barclays (BBB), the organization spearheading the campaign, asserted that the bank was engaged in “laundering its reputation” through its association with music festivals, a claim that Barclays refutes.
In her statement, Thompson said that she had asked that Latitude find a different sponsor, but it was “made clear” to her that this would not happen.
New book shines light on life — and death — of Abdullah bin Saud Al-Saud
- UK historian’s ‘The Imam, the Pasha and the Englishman’ reveals details of meeting between Al-Saud and the Ottoman governor of Egypt
DUBAI: In April 1818, Ottoman forces under the leadership of Ibrahim Pasha — the eldest son of the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha — began to lay siege to Diriyah. The culmination of a seven-year campaign against the Saudis, the siege would result in the defeat of the First Saudi State.
Saudi forces resisted for six months before Abdullah bin Saud Al-Saud, the fourth and final ruler of the First Saudi State, sued for peace. In exchange for his surrender, he requested that Diriyah be spared. Instead the city was razed to the ground, and he was sent to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), where he was executed.
En route, he passed through Cairo, where he met his triumphant foe, Muhammad Ali Pasha, for the first and only time. Their meeting was witnessed by an Englishman called John Bowes Wright, a well-connected, politically attuned traveler. It is Wright’s previously unpublished account of their meeting that the historian Michael Crawford has drawn on for his book “The Imam, the Pasha and the Englishman,” which was released by Arabian Publishing earlier this month.
“I’ve always been interested in the fate of Imam Abdullah because he seemed to have been written out of a lot of the history, despite having been a champion of his people, his religion, and his country,” says Crawford.
Bowes Wright’s account of the meeting takes the form of a letter to his oldest friend and regular correspondent, Joseph Lamb, a Newcastle coal merchant. “There was a slight melancholy in his countenance but mixed with a firmness and dignity suited to his situation beyond anything I had ever witnessed,” wrote Bowes Wright of Abdullah bin Saud. “His dark visage was rather long and careworn; he wore a red shawl wrapped round his head, and a loose brown and white camlet robe, and in every respect appeared, as he was, a perfect Chief of the Desert.”
Not only does the letter provide a first-hand account of Abdullah bin Saud’s courage and composure, it enables a comparison with the narrative provided by Abd Al-Rahman Al-Jabarti, a renowned Egyptian historian who also recorded the meeting between the two rivals. While Bowes Wright’s letter reveals an acceptance of the reasoning of his Ottoman hosts, Al-Jabarti was more sympathetic to Abdullah bin Saud.
Why was Bowes Wright present at the meeting? Arguably as a publicity stunt, Crawford suggests.
“I think Muhammad Ali thought, ‘Well, this is my big moment. The enemy I’ve been fighting for seven years has been defeated. I’m going to have my meeting with him. I want this publicized in Europe.’ There weren’t any journalists in those days, so I think he just said to the British representative (in Cairo), ‘Bring anybody along — any senior travelers who you might have staying — and they can witness the meeting.”
Central to the meeting was the question of treasures taken from the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb in Madinah in 1807, prior to Abdullah bin Saud’s reign. The Ottomans, particularly Sultan Mahmud II, wanted to know where the missing treasure was. Some of it, including emeralds, other jewels, and volumes of the Holy Qur’an, were returned by Abdullah bin Saud. The location of the rest remains a mystery.
“Of course, ‘theft’ depends on who you believe owned them,” says Crawford. “The Ottomans obviously felt that they owned most of them, and the Saudis believed that they were there to serve religion and, if jihad needed funding, or the people needed money to just survive, then they could draw on those. And the interesting thing is that Al-Jabarti actually agreed with them — which is pretty remarkable really.”
Crawford, who was partly brought up in the Middle East and served for the UK government in Saudi Arabia between 1986 and 1990, wrote the book to shed light on a lesser-known period of the Kingdom’s history. He also wanted to draw attention to Abdullah bin Saud himself, whose execution has always troubled him.
“He was basically a soldier,” says Crawford. “His father (Saud bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud) was much more of a politician — one of those great men of the Middle East renowned for their generosity and extravagance. Everybody loved him and admired him and so on, but he was an extremely tough and authoritarian figure. I think Abdullah was perhaps less well-rounded; more of a soldier, much less of a politician. He perhaps didn’t understand how to keep the tribes on side and I think his strategy was probably wrong. He withdrew too quickly back into Najd and I don’t think he had the same kind of hold over people that his father had. But he was brave and he absolutely did his best.”
Could the outcome have been different? Could the First Saudi State have survived?
“Given how extended Ottoman supply lines and logistics were, if he’d managed to keep the major tribes on side then I think he could have stalled the Ottomans at Qasim, or even before Qasim,” Crawford suggests. “But he didn’t manage to keep them on side and, of course, many of the tribes were rather flattered by Muhammad Ali’s attentions. They were given shawls and cloaks and swords and all the gifts that he needed to give. It’s all recorded in Egyptian documents. If (Abdullah bin Saud) had been a bigger personality, or more generous, or had a greater grip on people’s imaginations, as his father did, maybe the state would have survived for longer. But ultimately, the Egyptian machine had much bigger resources and Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim, as a combination, were fairly brutal.”
Crawford’s interest in the Kingdom’s history began when studying at Oxford under the British-Lebanese historian Albert Hourani. “Nobody wrote about it,” he says. “Everybody wrote about the Levant. It was all about Cairo and Damascus and Baghdad and the great metropolises, and no one wrote about Saudi Arabia. Indeed, there was a rather sniffy attitude to the history of the Arabian Peninsula: ‘There’s not much there, there’s no material.’ And actually, that’s not true. There is a phenomenal amount of material, just no one had really focused on it apart from George Rentz and (Harry St John Bridger) Philby, whose books were completely unreadable.”
If nothing else, Crawford hopes his book will encourage a deeper understanding of the Kingdom’s history.
“I do think it’s important that people should have some sort of grasp of where the country has come from. I’ve been writing Saudi history since 1982 — somewhat specialized, I admit — but this was a chance to try and bring some of it alive.”
Saudi artists on show in UAE gallery exhibition
DUBAI: Here are five highlights from ‘Gracefulness of Daily Life’ at Ziddoun Bossuyt in Dubai.
Halla Bint Khalid
This non-selling group show, which runs until June 8, consists of work by artists coming out of Gharem Studio in Riyadh, a non-profit organization founded by one of the Kingdom’s most celebrated artists, Abdulnasser Gharem, and co-owned by Halla Bint Khalid, also an artist. According to the show brochure, Bint Khalid uses her work to “pose questions, encourage self-awareness and challenge limiting societal norms.” This drawing, “Domestication,” comes from her series “In the Fine Print,” which, the brochure states, “attempts to shine a light on daily issues that have been normalized by the patriarchal narrative (and that) ultimately dehumanize, oppress, and limit every member of the family.”
Sumayah Fallatah
The Alkhobar-born, Riyadh-based photographer uses her work to explore “themes such as race and its representation in the Arab world. She also delves into her cultural identity as a third-generation Saudi Arabian-Nigerian, examining her family’s migration history and the integration of Saudi culture with their Nigerian identity.” The series to which these images belong, “Say Mon Dawo II”(Till We Return II) “reconstructs a long history of Hausa migration to Saudi Arabia due to colonial impact and the desire to protect their Islamic identity” and “embodies characters from various phases of the migratory assimilation.”
Abdulnasser Gharem
As well as being the founder of his eponymous studio, Gharem is also co-founder of the seminal social enterprise Edge of Arabia. Much of his work is informed by his time as an army officer, and he often uses rubber stamps of the kind used for administrative paperwork around the world as a tool, as in this piece, “Caged Humanity,” created in 2022. In the press release for this show, Gharem expresses his hope that it will prove “studios are places through which you discover the intelligence of cities. Artists strive to rationalize the world of their daily lives, constantly looking towards the future through imaginative eyes.”
Aljan Gharem
Abdulnasser’s younger brother has also attracted international acclaim. The installation pictured here, “Paradise Has Many Gates,” won the Jameel Prize in 2021, and was exhibited at the Vancouver Biennale in 2018. It is a mosque made of steel tubes and chicken wires. As such, it “immediately provokes anxiety,” the brochure states, “as it (recalls) the architecture of border fences and detention centers.” It continues: “For Gharem it is a broader metaphor for Islamophobia and the prison of identity — hundreds of thousands of Muslims are imprisoned for their beliefs worldwide — and for the dangers of religious ideology.”
Haitham Alsharif
The Riyadh-born photographer’s work focuses on “documenting the social shift in Saudi Arabia and observing the new changes and conversations that are held in his community.” His series “The Social Shift,” from which this image — “Jawaher” — is taken, is “based on ethnographic observations and conversations with individuals and communities … telling stories about subjects changing in Saudi Arabia, including … self-representation and expression, lifestyle, occupation, and more.”
‘Beauty is needed for your soul,’ Saudi artist Nasser Almulhim says
- The Saudi artist discusses societal shifts, art as therapy, and ‘putting it all out there’
DUBAI: The emerging Saudi artist Nasser Almulhim is an open book. A little over 10 minutes into our interview, Almulhim, speaking from his studio in Riyadh, admits to dealing with mental health issues, particularly depression. He copes, he says, by deep breathing, praying, walking barefoot on the grass, and getting in touch with his spiritual side. The topic arose when I asked about his childhood in Saudi Arabia, at a time when the country was much more restrictive.
“I never confronted this question, because I always feared looking back at memories. It wasn’t an easy lifestyle for men or women,” Almulhim, who was born in 1988, tells Arab News.
Almulhim comes from a large family of four sisters and three brothers. They were raised in Riyadh’s Al-Malaz neighborhood, largely populated by an expat community of Sudanese, Egyptians and Jordanians, according to the artist. Interacting with people of different backgrounds enriched his upbringing.
“My parents raised me well and taught me to respect people from a young age,” he says. “It was a very simple lifestyle. We didn’t have much, but my family provided us with safety and a good education. I studied in a public school and we were in the street a lot. We were playing football and we used to spray paint, just being rebellious, and the police would come,” he says. “Art was dead back in the day. It was haram.”
Despite this, Almulhim, who enjoyed math and science as school subjects, was always sketching. “My parents saw something within me,” he says. It is also possible that Almulhim, who describes himself as a visual, nature-loving person, inherited his artistic sensibilities from his family. Almulhim says his grandmother was a poet, and his father was passionate about analog photography.
“I believe he has an artistic side, but he is not embracing it,” he says. “He has a beautiful vision, even with the way he decorated the house. It came from someone who was vulnerable and sensitive.”
During Almulhim’s high school years, he started to notice how ‘different’ he was as a Saudi, compared to other Arabs in the region. “We used to travel to Syria and Lebanon,” he recalls. “In Beirut, everyone was hanging out on the beach. People were doing their thing, and then I would come back to Riyadh, and it was the complete opposite. I would ask my dad, ‘Are we outsiders?’ And he would say, ‘There is a system. This is our tradition and culture.’ So I was always trying to do the opposite.”
After graduating from high-school, Almulhim, who didn’t speak English at the time, travelled all the way to Sydney, Australia, to study intensive English courses, and later moved to the US to pursue a bachelor’s degree. “The funny part is, I went there to study engineering,” he says, adding that the men in his family were doctors or engineers. At university, he spent time with creative people studying music and theatre, and they noticed something about him.
“They saw me reading books, sketching, playing the guitar, watching art documentaries, and going to museums. They were telling me to shift my major. It was a big deal for me and for my family as well. I shifted to study fine arts, and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I felt light, I felt like myself,” Almulhim, who graduated with a degree in studio art from the University of West Florida, says.
As reflected in his colorful paintings, Almulhim isn’t afraid of embracing his feminine side, something that stems from his close relationship with his sisters.
“I always felt comfortable talking to them, even about sensitive topics, which I couldn’t talk to my parents about. There was a gap,” he says. But, it has invited criticism from male viewers. “With using pink, for example, I’ve had men ask me, ‘Why are you using pink? You’re a man.’”
He says he wants to go “back to basics” with his painting, by appreciating beauty again.
“In art, beauty is my greatest inspiration. The late Lebanese artist Etel Adnan said that, nowadays in the art scene, we’ve neglected the idea of beauty and we’re just focused on the conceptual,” he says. “People like distraction, which makes sense because we live in distraction. But I feel like beauty is needed for your soul, your physical self, and being nice to other people.”
Almulhim fills his calming canvases, composed of floating geometric forms, with open spaces of color.
“In painting, I like colors that bring happiness and might heal you. It puts you in a state of mind that doesn’t numb you, but makes you disconnect from the distraction around you. I always say that art is therapy for me. Part of it is, I feel like I’m escaping, maybe from some pain that I need to heal from, and part of it is that I’m confronting that pain,” he explains, adding that he hopes to one day pursue a doctorate degree in art therapy. His paintings also contain a psychological and spiritual element, creating a universe of his own, where he is “channeling the Higher Power, Allah, this great universe, this divinity that is outside and within us.”
On June 6, Almulhim will open his new exhibition, “On In-Between,” at Tabari Art Space in Dubai. Through his new paintings, the artist is tackling the psychological stages of the subconscious, pre-consciousness, and consciousness.
“I’m telling the audience that we have to understand this world to heal and to know ourselves,” he says. “Also, it’s fine to flow between these two or three fields. I’m telling you as a humble human being, I am all of these things: My chaos, my order, my vulnerability, my beauty, my ugliness. I’m putting it all out there.”
Almulhim is also driven at this stage of his career by collaborating with fellow artists in the Arab region. He would like to set up art-residency exchanges, where artists from Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan can work in his Riyadh space, and vice-versa. He says it was the ongoing tragedy in Gaza that sparked this idea.
“I’m an artist, but, above that, I’m a human being,” he says. “How can I help? How can I contribute? How can we learn from each other as Arabs and as citizens of the globe? I feel in our region, we are in need of this unity.”
