DHAHRAN: There’s a new exhibition in town. Some of the artists you know, and some you don’t — which is exactly the point.
The works of more than four dozen pioneering women from across the Arab world are on display — some for the first time ever — in “Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World (’60s–’80s),” which opened Sept. 18 at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran and runs until Feb. 14. The show contains 70 works by artists from 13 countries.
Fatima Hassan Assiri, ‘Untitled.’ (Courtesy of Jameelah Assiri)
“The idea behind the title was to give back agency to a generation of women who have been overlooked,” the show’s curator, Rémi Homs, tells Arab News. “We also wanted to see this relationship between arts and craft as a horizon for further research. And we wanted to have this idea of hands — something handmade.”
The exhibition is a collaboration between Ithra and Barjeel, a UAE-based foundation established by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi in 2010. Of the 50 artists featured, four are from Saudi Arabia: Mona Al-Munajjed, Fatima Hassan Assiri, Mounirah Mosly, and Safeya Binzagr, regarded as the mother of Saudi modern art. Both Al-Munajjed and Binzagr are the subjects of an “In Focus” section of the show, along with the late Tunisian artist Safia Farhat, and the Wissa Wassef Art Center in Egypt, which preserves hand-weaving traditions.
