RIYADH: A Saudi art gallery has launched an initiative to provide financial grants to help support the work of artists in the Kingdom during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Athr Gallery in Jeddah recently announced its Maan (Arabic for together) project in a bid to cushion the impact of the virus outbreak on the local art scene. As part of its mission to keep the arts sustained and accessible to a wider audience, Athr has collaborated with seven artists, whose limited-edition works will be sold to fund the grants.
The artists contributing their pieces are Ahmed Mater, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Dana Awartani, Manal Al-Dowayan, Muhannad Shono, Nasser Al-Salem, and Sultan bin Fahad.

Curator David Drake guides us through his exhibition of 15 artists from the UK and the Gulf, who explore the deceptively simple theme of home
For some people, home is defined by the place they were born, in the proximity of their friends and family, while for others, it is an adopted place – one where they have built an affinity with the land and its cultural identity. Some may consider home as a more concrete fact that relates to their ethnicity or cultural background, and in the eyes of governing bodies, home may be defined as the place listed as your current place of residence in your official documents. But for an Egyptian taxi driver, who curator David Drake encountered during one of his visits to Kuwait, home is the smell of orange blossom, which grows every summer in the village where he grew up. 

دبي، الإمارات العربية المتحدة (CNN)-- مجموعة صور فوتوغرافية، تكمن تفاصيل جمالها في سكونها، وسورياليتها، وروحانيتها.. مساجد تاريخية تجدها على طرق مختلفة، تربط بين مدن المملكة العربية السعودية، كانت قد دفعت المصور السعودي، معاذ العوفي، أن يطرح على نفسه ألف سؤال وسؤال، حول سبب بنائها وهجرها.
وفي حديثه مع موقع CNN بالعربية، قال معاذ العوفي: "الهدف هو إعادة التفكير في الاحتياجات الضرورية لبناء هذه المساجد وتنظيمها بشكل مدروس، بهدف ألّا تتعرض للهجر والتدمير، وأن تُبنى بشكل مستدام إذا دعت الحاجة".
 

Much of the work is exuberant and visually spectacular, from a giant swing set by the Danish collective Superflex (which first appeared in Tate Modern in 2017) to a 25ft-tall silver fuselage-type installation by American artist Gisela Colon that calls to mind a sex object outlawed in the kingdom.
Saudi artist and storyteller Muhannad Shono showed his The Lost Path installation, which binds together 65,000 black plastic pipes to wind hundreds of feet through the dunes and cliffs. The work, he says, is meant to invoke a treasure map as well as a reminder of the oil that the tubes once contained and the far-reaching effects of that modern-day treasure.

I Love You, Urgently looks to natural forms, communities, connections, and a level-­playing field between humans and the natural world – ideas such as camel herders singing lullabies to their animals. Its ostensible focus is the continuing climate emergency, though the artists involved in the exhibition were inspired not just by climate change, but by the strategies and shifts in mind-sets that will be necessary to improve or adapt to a changed planet.
“I asked artists to think about three core ideas,” El Khalil says. “The first was biomimicry – a connection with nature, learning from nature, from 3.8 billion years of evolution. The second was adaptability: decisions might need to be amended very quickly, and the needs themselves might need to be amended very quickly. And the third was specificity: to look at our environment and to think, what are the specific needs?” Each of the works on show were commissioned, and the 21, 39 organisers worked with the artists from research phase to final result.

في الصحراء نتواضع ونشعر بحجمنا الحقيقي في هذا الكون، يراودني الشعور أثناء رحلة نحو العلا السعودية لمعاينة معرض فني ضخم بعنوان «ديزيرت إكس». ويمثل معرض «ديزرت إكس العلا» أول تعاون دولي لـ«ديزرت إكس» الذي يقام في «كونشيلا فالي» بكاليفورنيا الأميركية وتأسس لربط المجتمعات والثقافات الصحراوية من خلال الفن المعاصر. وينظم المعرض بالتعاون مع المخرج الفني في «ديزيرت إكس» نيفيل ويكفيلد والقيّمتين والمختصتين في الفن المعاصر من المملكة رنيم فارسي وآية علي رضا.
الحافلة التي تقلنا نحو العلا محملة بجمع كثيف ومتنوع الجنسيات واللغات، كل فرد في انتظار المفاجأة المعدة لنا، وعدنا بمعر ض فني كبير وعرفنا بعض الأسماء المشاركة، وها نحن نقترب من ذلك العرض، نشغل الوقت بالأحاديث الجانبية وبالنظر من نوافذ الحافلة لتصافح أعيننا التشكيلات الصخرية الشهيرة في العلا... ولكن لنا حديث آخر مع تلك الإبداعات الصخرية، نحن الآن في الموقع حيث تبدأ عناصر المفاجأة في الظهور شيئاً فشيئاً... على مسافات تكاد تكون متساوية نرى تشكيلات فنية بعضها مكون من قطعة واحدة فقط، وبعضها الآخر من أكثر من قطعة، كل منها يبدو متواضعاً في ظلال الجبال الصخرية، لن يبزها جلالا ولكن يكتفي بأن يكون وجوده هنا نوعاً من الحوار البصري، بين الإنسان والطبيعة، بين ما شكلته الرياح والمياه على مدى قرون لا تعد من أخاديد وأحافير وفجوات في الصخور الممتدة على مدى البصر، وبين ما شكلته يد إنسانية تقدم التساؤلات والتأملات في الحياة ومعانيها.

وينظّم معرض «ديزرت إكس» العلا للمرة الأولى بالتعاون مع المخرج الفني نيفيل ويكفيلد والمختصتين في الفن المعاصر رنيم فارسي وآية علي رضا من السعودية، ويعرض 14 عملا لفنانين محليين وعالميين مصممة لتحاكي طبيعة العلا. وقدّم الفنان راشد الشعشعي عمله «ممر مختصر» الذي يصور فيه إبل وخيول الرحالة وقوافل التجارة التي كانت تجد من مغارات وشعاب العلا الفريدة ملجأ من اللصوص وقطاع الطرق ويستمدون من عيونها ماء ما ساعد في تنامي حضارات العلا عبر العصور وصنع منها محطة لحضارات متعاقبة. بينما يعرض الفنان مهند شونو في عمله «المسار المفقود» فكرة البحث عن معنى للحياة عن طريق المسارات والخرائط التي يتبعها الإنسان. وذكر شونو أن خرائط الكنز غالباً ما تؤدي إلى صناديق فارغة ويؤكد أن الرحلة بحق أكثر أهمية من الوجهة. وتابع: «هذا العمل يعطينا اتجاها نحو مساراتنا الشخصية المدفونة، إذ ينمو المسار المستمد من سطر واحد ليصبح تحفة نحتية تنتظر الزوار لاكتشافها».

On show now until 7 March 2020 in the extraordinary landscape of  AlUla  in Saudi Arabia, the Desert X AlUla exhibition, the first major contemporary art exhibition in the area, explores desert culture through cross-cultural dialogue between artists. Participating artists include Riyadh-based Muhannad Shono, Beirut-based Rayyane Tabet and  Jeddah -based Rashed AlShashai, to name a few.
The exhibition has been co-curated by Saudi curators Raneem Farsi and Aya Alireza and Desert X’s artistic director Neville Wakefield and has been organised by Desert X and the Royal Commission of AlUla (RCU). “Artists are at the centre of this exhibition conceived to foster artistic exchange and dialogue across continents,” says Farsi.

DUBAI: The sound of glass and hard metal emanates from a room in Dubai’s Jameel Arts Center. Something is being broken. Step inside the gallery and the noise is revealed to be coming from a video installation by Saudi artist Sarah Abu Abdallah called “Salad Zone,” in which two women in black abayas are repeatedly hitting a large television. 
The work, a 20-minute single-channel video projection in color and sound — originally commissioned for “Rhizoma,” a group show that took place during the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 — is both alarming and humorous. Abdallah herself is a protagonist in the film, and like her other multidisciplinary work, “Salad Zone” oscillates between the real, the poetic and the absurd.

From now through march 7, 2020  desert X   AlUla  is taking place in saudi arabia.  featuring  interactive installations  by 14 artists, the site-specific art exhibition brings together a plurality of voices to speak on the environmental conditions, historic context and the surrounding communities of the ancient oasis. co-curated by saudi curators  raneem farsi  and  aya alireza  with  neville wakefield —  the artistic director of desert X — the  public exhibition  is the first of its kind in saudi arabia.
N asser alsalem  —  ‘amma qabel’  is a sculpture with both interior and exterior landscapes, which embraces the idea of time as a continuum that connects all cultures and civilizations. the simple gesture of the installation mimics a passage-way with circumference shaped by calligraphic letters that read  ‘amma qabl ’, which means ‘what precedes’.

It’s an extreme meeting of the old and new: Desert X Al Ula has opened to the public, a six-week-specific installation of artworks made in the awesome setting of the Al Ula in north western Saudi Arabia.
Desert X began as a biennial in southern California, bringing visitors through the Coachella Valley in search installations, sculptures, and performances. Now, for the Royal Commission for Al Ula (RCU)’s first major contemporary art project for the heritage site, Desert X Al Ula commissions 14 Saudi and international artists to make artworks in the sand.
“Al Ula is the power of heritage crossing through multiple civilisations,” says Amr Al Madani, chief executive of the RCU. “This is a living museum interacting with nature.”

“I wish Ed [Ruscha] could have come to AlUla, attended the show, gotten to know us and seen our work,” Muhannad Shono, one of the participating artists, told  Artnet News . “Many Saudi artists are fed up with having to deal and respond to the bad headlines. None of the western media outlets have asked me about my work. All people want to do is talk about the controversy and not the art.”
The perception, Shono continues, is that “what I am doing and what other Saudi artists are doing is part of some propaganda agenda. I am working on concepts and ideas that are in no way scrutinized or censored. I am not part of some propaganda machine. I am an individual artist that is excited to be part of all the changes happening here. We want people to come and reach out to us and see what the people are doing.”