AMSTERDAM: Saudi artist Ahmed Mater’s acclaimed work “Magnetism” will be the first item under the hammer in The Future is Unwritten’s Healing Arts Auction series, beginning next month. The series is a joint project between Christie’s, the WHO Foundation and UN75 which, according to a press release, “aims to increase awareness around a global path to recovery (from the COVID-19 pandemic) and raise critical funds to mobilize artists and health professionals in support of communities most vulnerable, at-risk and with the weakest health systems to act effectively in response to the pandemic.” All proceeds will go to the WHO Foundation and The Future is Unwritten’s Artist Response Fund, which supports artist-led projects “that directly facilitate community healing and healthcare messaging in the aftermath of the pandemic.”

In the age of globalisation, Western culture saturates modern Arab identity. And the question we often ask ourselves is do we reject or ingest? For Saudi artist Ghada Al Rabea, it’s neither: she revisits famous Western paintings with sweet souvenirs of her own.
From conceiving a veiled Mona Lisa to depicting Saudi daily life, nothing is off-limits in her creative candy bowl. By warping our concept of what we perceive as junk, she’s created a signature all her own. From a distance, the pieces reflect an interlaced society. Up close, they’re playful memories of names and flavours of childhood.

"Growing up in a multicultural society allows you access to a plethora of tastes, cultures and mentalities. It gives you a superpower – to be able to feel empathy for what is other and what is foreign,” comments Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani, on growing up amidst a melting pot of cultures in Saudi Arabia.
Middle Eastern art is more than the sum of its parts – there is a misconception that art coming from our region, specifically from female artists, tackles topics of either suppression or exile, exclusively. Dana’s art breaks free from these constructs of suppressed identity and adopts a transformative style that feels almost liberating. “If you’re a Palestinian, you must be a refugee and therefore your art must talk about topics of supression; these are narratives I didn’t really relate to,” admits Dana.
 

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.