JEDDAH: As Saudi Arabia rounds up a year of creative firsts, from concerts to Comic Con events, it seems that 2017 has been one for the books.
This is equally evident in the world of art, with the Kingdom playing host to a year full of art shows and exhibits. The art scene is fast-paced, bizarre and exciting and is always changing, with new artists emerging and established talents experimenting with their craft.
Rounding out the year, ATHR gallery’s Young Saudi Artist “Pulse” exhibit is set to run until Jan. 5 and is a biannual event in its fifth edition.
This year’s rather chaotic exhibit was based on the concept of “Time: Past, present and future” and showcased the works of 25 new artists, some of which were showcasing their art for the first time in their careers. The work ranged from awe-inspiring to disappointing, but it was refreshing to see such a wealth of new artists all exhibiting in one place.
Some pieces were truly bizarre, some were fun and cartoonish and others brought back a sense of nostalgia that would melt even the hardest art critic’s heart.
“There are so much amazing talents out there and as a photographer, I am focused on checking out the little people (new artists) — those who aren’t out there yet. I do this because I can see there are so many extremely talented people very deserving of the attention simply because they want to make art,” documentary photographer Iman Al-Dabbagh told Arab News.
One attention-grabbing artist was Obada Al-Jefri’s with a piece called “Trash Bags,” a series of three watercolor paintings and a sculpture of a cat in a trash bag made entirely of felt. The concept was unique, unnerving and intriguing.
“I came back from the US recently only to see that the stray cats’ infestation in my city has grown to a level where people are disgusted yet unmoved by their constant presence. They weren’t given any type of care or attention. They’re commonly viewed as garbage dwellers and invaders when we forget that they’re creatures that need to be taken care of just like any other domestic animal,” Al-Jefri told Arab News. “I want to bring attention to their plight and the importance of their being. Each painting is a lifelike representation of compassion and a challenge to the social construct that is a street cat, I wanted to shock a viewer to reconsider their stance toward them. There’s a balance of admiration and disgust that works, it speaks to you.”
Rex Chouk’s paintings — a contemporary commentary of the Saudi system — feature classical cartoon characters, such as Bugs Bunny running after Daffy Duck, integrated with slang or an icon from a global pop culture, car drifting for example, on a large canvas. His work brought out the child within.
Photographer and collagist Rund Al-Arabi’s “Circa now” of well-preserved photographs of family members also evoked a sense of nostalgia, much like Chouk’s work. According to Rund, “you control passing these memories on to the next generation.” She artfully placed one image on top of another, creating a fascinating collage.
“I dug up old photographs of my family and collected them accordingly. One is from Bab Shareef in Jeddah while another is in Um Durman, Sudan, another is in Canada while the other in Japan. I took months to mash each one and connect them, they’re an extension of each other. As I was looking at each picture, I felt that each one is connected to another and I could see a story form in front of me,” she told Arab News.
The year is coming to an end, but this art show goes on until Jan. 5 and serves as a reminder that there is always new, innovative Saudi Arabia-based talent waiting to burst onto the scene.
Saudi art show spotlights young artists to watch in 2018
Saudi art show spotlights young artists to watch in 2018
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.”
