KABUL: Ceramics, carpentry, calligraphy and gem cutting: centuries of Afghan craftmanship honed on the ancient Silk Road are being preserved in Kabul, a rare success story for an aid project in the war-torn country that organizers are now hoping to replicate with refugees from Syria.
In the sixteen years since the fall of the Taliban, the Turquoise Mountain foundation has found some of Afghanistan’s best artisans and helped them preserve and pass on their skills, as well helping them showcase their work in international markets.
A painstakingly restored caravanserai — a roadside inn — in Kabul’s oldest district is once again a hub for exquisite woodwork carvers, potters making traditionally-glazed ceramics, Islamic calligraphers, and goldsmiths.
“When we started, there were very few artisans living in Kabul. Most of them were out of the country,” said Abdul Wahid Khalili, the nonprofit’s director.
“We had to start with the few old artisans we had, it was a very difficult start,” he said.
Kabul, a key stop on the silk road, was once renowned for its craftwork, but when Turquoise Mountain began work in 2006 in Kabul’s oldest district Mourad Khani, they had to excavate the caravanserai from tons of rubbish.
“For more than 50 years the rubbish had piled up in the yard,” he said, adding that they also immediately began training students.
“The idea was to restore the (caravanserai) and train the new generation,” he said.
Slowly more and more Afghan artisans joined the collective, preserving priceless skills that many feared would disappear altogether due to decades of war — a problem that many Syrian craftsmen, who are fleeing their country in droves, now face.
First started by British diplomat Rory Stewart, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which is supported by Britain’s Prince Charles, the British Council, and USAID, says it has now worked with some 5,000 artisans.
Their efforts have breathed new life into Murad Khani’s ancient silver bazaar, with hundreds traveling every day to the restored cedar paneled courtyard to learn and teach woodwork, calligraphy, ceramics, jewelry and miniature painting.
Staff at Turquoise Mountain began by combing Kabul’s streets and knocking on doors in the villages trying to find artisans and students to enroll.
The foundation now employs 30 Afghan masters, who are given retraining and support from the organization, and then help teach new apprentices in their craft.
Wakil Abdul Aqi Ahmani, 64, is one of the institute’s founding fathers.
“It’s my heritage, it’s important because we have to preserve the culture of our country,” he says, as he leans over his student’s cedarwood panels and explains the art of Jali carving.
Turquoise Mountain’s selection process is now more rigorous: more than 500 candidates apply each year, Khalili said, with just 50 taken on, both girls and boys.
“They show what they learned with their family, in the shops, at the bazaar, with the elders,” said Abasin Bahand, who is in charge of the entry exams.
“They are all trained, but they are not professional — anyone can apply.”
The three years of their training are free, the students are fed and housed if they come from the provinces. They are also given a small monthly stipend to cover transport costs. They leave with a double certifications — Afghan and British.
“Eighty percent of our graduates have moved to their own business or are working for other business in the craft they chose,” said Nathan Stroupe, the director of the Turquoise Mountain foundation in Afghanistan.
Some of their carpentry students have decorated palaces in London and the Emirates, and jewelers have received commissions for New York Fashion Week.
“We have a business incubation process to support our students for three years,” Stroupe said.
“Some of the craftsmen had worked for the King,” he said, referring to Mohammed Zaher Shah, who was deposed in 1973.
But the process is still a race against time.
“For Jali and Nuristani carving, we had teachers who were the last in Afghanistan, they passed away. If we were not able to preserve these arts, they would have been lost,” said Khalili.
“Already there are specific areas we lost — there are no copper makers left, no bronze makers.”
“Now we are documenting all those areas, we want to spread (knowledge) all over the country, the idea is to transfer it to community... if not it will be lost again,” he said.
After its successes in Afghanistan, the foundation is looking at wartorn Syria, which is also seeing ancient traditions threatened by an exodus of artisans.
“We have already met Syrian artisans in Jordan,” said Scott Riddle, a project director who will start work in September.
“Some people in Amman have already managed to set up small ateliers. We’re researching in the refugee camp in Azraq, in the desert in the country’s northeast.”
After Jordan, Turquoise Mountain is looking to work with refugee artisans from Libya.
Past masters: Saving Afghanistan’s artisans from extinction
Past masters: Saving Afghanistan’s artisans from extinction
Kawthar Al-Atiyah: ‘My paintings speak first to the body, then to the mind’
- The Saudi artist discusses her creative process and her responsibility to ‘represent Saudi culture’
RIYADH: Contemporary Saudi artist Kawthar Al-Atiyah uses painting, sculpture and immersive material experimentation to create her deeply personal works. And those works focus on one recurring question: What does emotion look like when it becomes physical?
“My practice begins with the body as a site of memory — its weight, its tension, its quiet shifts,” Al-Atiyah tells Arab News. “Emotion is never abstract to me. It lives in texture, in light, in the way material breathes.”
This philosophy shapes the immersive surfaces she creates, which often seem suspended between presence and absence. “There is a moment when the body stops being flesh and becomes presence, something felt rather than seen,” she says. “I try to capture that threshold.”
Al-Atiyah, a graduate of Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, has steadily built an international profile for herself. Her participation in VOLTA Art Fair at Art Basel in Switzerland, MENART Fair in Paris, and exhibitions in the Gulf and Europe have positioned her as a leading Saudi voice in contemporary art.
Showing abroad has shaped her understanding of how audiences engage with vulnerability. “Across countries and cultures, viewers reacted to my work in ways that revealed their own memories,” she says. “It affirmed my belief that the primary language of human beings is emotion. My paintings speak first to the body, then to the mind.”
Al-Atiyah says her creative process begins long before paint touches canvas. Instead of sketching, she constructs physical environments made of materials including camel bone, raw cotton, transparent fabrics, and fragments of carpet.
“When a concept arrives, I build it in real space,” she says. “I sculpt atmosphere, objects, light and emotion before I sculpt paint.
“I layer color the way the body stores experience,” she continues. “Some layers stay buried, others resurface unexpectedly. I stop only when the internal rhythm feels resolved.”
This sensitivity to the unseen has drawn attention from international institutions. Forbes Middle East included her among the 100 Most Influential Women in the Arab World in 2024 and selected several of her pieces for exhibition.
“One of the works was privately owned, yet they insisted on showing it,” she says. “For me, that was a strong sign of trust and recognition. It affirmed my responsibility to represent Saudi culture with honesty and depth.”
Her recent year-long exhibition at Ithra deepened her understanding of how regional audiences interpret her work.
“In the Gulf, people respond strongly to embodied memory,” she says. “They see themselves in the quiet tensions of the piece, perhaps because we share similar cultural rhythms.”
A documentary is now in production exploring her process, offering viewers a rare look into the preparatory world that precedes each canvas.
“People usually see the final work. But the emotional architecture built before the painting is where the story truly begins,” she explains.
Beyond her own practice, Al-Atiyah is committed to art education through her work with Misk Art Institute. “Teaching is a dialogue,” she says. “I do not focus on technique alone. I teach students to develop intuition, to trust their senses, to translate internal experiences into honest visual language.”
She believes that artists should be emotionally aware as well as technically skilled. “I want them to connect deeply with themselves so that what they create resonates beyond personal expression and becomes part of a cultural conversation,” she explains.
In Saudi Arabia’s rapidly growing art scene, Al-Atiyah sees her role as both storyteller and facilitator.
“Art is not decoration, it is a language,” she says. “If my work helps someone remember something they have forgotten or feel something they have buried, then I have done what I set out to do.”
