DUBAI: Last month, at one of the art world’s most high-profile annual events, Art Basel, a luminous textile work by Saudi artist Hana Almilli traced a new kind of geography — one mapped through grief, alienation and the fragile notion of home and belonging.
Almilli, a multimedia artist, textile designer and poet, was among the artists presented by the Sigg Art Foundation during its Art Basel week program. Founded by Saudi Arabia-based Swiss collector Pierre Sigg, the foundation has a long-standing connection with the Kingdom’s cultural landscape, including an AlUla residency program supporting artists working across heritage, place, memory and new technologies.
For Almilli, the Art Basel opportunity was the culmination of a relationship that had been developing for years.
“I’ve known them for quite a while. I’ve been honored to be nominated in the second edition of the Sigg Art Prize… and that led on to having more conversations with them, which led to speaking about including some of my works for the curated preview (at Art Basel),” she told Arab News. “It’s an honor, as a Saudi artist and a textile artist, to be a part of something such as this. For me, it’s important to have my voice out there. It’s important to highlight textiles as an art as well.”
