Hailing from  Saudi Arabia , Al Faraj has previously showcased his work across Dubai and Jeddah. “I think what really drove the idea into becoming this work was mainly seeing the robot Sophia being awarded the Saudi citizenship on TV, in contrast to my experience in trying to make a film about a group of displaced undocumented people in southern Saudi Arabia,” shares Al Faraj. “This was also my first attempt into balancing between the form and the content, make both influence each other in the work so that three chapters unfold in a sculpture of screens that's built and designed on three planes.”

Dana Awartani, Abdulnasser Gharem, Ayman Yossri Daydban and Basmah Felemban take us inside their Saudi Arabia-based studios
Ayman Yossri Daydban: “I see my studio as an important piece of artwork—it is always changing, never settling in one location. I never decided what medium I will use—sometimes I paint, sometimes I crush elements together and sometimes I mix unconventional, untraditional styles together. I will keep searching for answers. I am currently working on a solo exhibition with Athr Gallery which will launch in September.”

A recent project of the world renowned curator, Rahul Gudipudi, is  The Silence Is Still Talking,  a solo exhibition by Muhanned Shono. A showcase that consists of charcoal on blank paper seems uninspired, derivative, or even tedious. However, that is the point Shono is trying to make. Shono believes that people have the unfortunate tendency to restrain their words and verbal expressions; there is a lack of creativity and imagination with words. Through using the restricted tools of charcoal and paper, Shono has proven that word expression is a limitless endeavor. It can be explored in a plethora of different ways and angles.

Artists showcasing their work at the “Second Hand” exhibit include resident Art Jameel artists, including, Diana Al-Hadid, Doa Aly, Fayçal Baghriche, Walead Beshty, Vikram Divecha, Bita Ghezelayagh, Mohammed Kazem, Azade Köker, Cinthia Marcelle, Keita Miyazaki, Slavs and Tatars, Moffat Takadiwa, Mario García Torres, Jason Dodge, Zahrah Al-Ghamdi, Adel Abdessemed, Haig Aivazian, and Abbas Akhavan. The name of the art show is inspired by Moffat Takadiwa’s piece, “Second Hand Information” (2014). Hailing from Zimbabwe, Moffat’s piece is formed by computer keys, which instigates the notion that the way information is carried from one person to another, and so forth, is similar to the way “material changes over time”. Much of the artwork from the show has been created using materials that have been repurposed or morphed to highlight the way in which a setting can transform the purpose of particular resources. Interestingly, there are also some art pieces in the exhibition that look at the way items and art are created, making the process of creation, artistic.

“I don’t play music, but I felt that at times I was playing music by ear with this exhibition, listening to conversations around me as they were coming to the surface,” says Inouye.
Composition and sound are also key to Mohammed Al Faraj’s 10-minute video  Sophia  (2018-2019). Projected on three surfaces – two joining walls and the floor – the work merges real news footage of Sophia, the first robot to be granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, with reportage about a distressed sea turtle in Jeddah and other images of the artist’s home town, Al Hassa, in Saudi Arabia. It has an apocalyptic feel to it, particularly as Al Faraj has introduced purposeful glitches, which the curator says represent a kind of “digital decay that anticipates the demise of our computational order”.
For me, the show feels like a snapshot of now, which although spreads across a wide social and political geography, is talking of something much more central to human consciousness – the idea of a common intuition or a common idea that can traverse boundaries and borders and indeed, crash through the surface.
Surface Tension runs until September 7 at Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, www.sharjahart.org

DUBAI: The Dubai-based Jameel Arts Centre has unveiled a new program this summer, including a diverse exhibition titled “Second Hand,” which is set to run until Nov. 23.
The exhibition explores divergent takes on materiality and features works by 18 artists and collectives from the Art Jameel Collection. It includes commissions, performances, workshops, talks and film screenings.
While a meticulously crafted, site-specific commission by Zahrah Al-Ghamdi sees leather forms spill out across the gallery and into the adjacent courtyard.

THE RED PALACE RETURNS TO LIVE
It is in Riyadh that the artist  Sultan bin Fahad  (Riyad, 1971) - a member of the royal family and one of the most active and enthusiastic promoters and initiators of the change - installed a monumental exhibition divided into seven chapters, curated by Reem Fadda, in the evocative spaces and  délabré  of the Red Palace. Center of power and magnificence, the Palace, completed in 1944 - the first building in the capital to be built with concrete and iron-steel - was the residence of the then Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz, later the office of the Saudi Ministers Council and until 1987 the Palace of complaints. It has been closed and abandoned for twenty years and after the exhibition it will be converted into a hotel.
The artist has long been fascinated by the palace and his exhibition, through installations, videos and photographs, talks about the events that took place there - from the power meetings behind the scenes to the work of the many attendants who worked there - over the years and the history of the country. Family history.  "On the evening of the opening to the public,  " he says, "  I met a lady in her nineties who told me that she lived in the Palace. Walking with his grandchildren he recognized the various rooms. He began to cry, seized by nostalgia and the many memories of his days spent in the Palace ”
 
 

Shedding light on “The wave won’t stop when you leave”, Basmah Felemban, curator of the activity, said that the enthusiasm that the local kids showed during the workshops and the outstanding creativity they demonstrated will no doubt contribute to enriching the Historical Area artistically and maintain a culture of beauty and creativity. 
She pointed out that street art in its various shapes and forms can be noticed across the country, whether it features poetic or social statements, group tags, or beautiful murals; this type of visual outcome is at once an individualistic form of expression, and a form of social commentary.

Previous winners of the Ithra Art Prize are Ayman Zedani and  Dania Al Saleh . Zedani won in 2018 for his large-scale, concrete construction,  Meem , while this year, the jury chose Alsaleh, who produced a digital, audio-visual presentation, consisting of 28 screens, based on the phonemes of the Arabic language.

“Amma baad” has no direct correlation in English. It is used to signal a move out of the honorific salutations with which Arabic letters or formal emails begin, and towards the content of the correspondence itself. “It’s like ‘thereafter’,” saysMaya El Khalil, curator of Al Salem’s exhibition at the Delfina Foundation in London. “It’s a moment of pure transition: now the real business begins.”
 
For Al Salem, who says he has been toying with the idea for a year, the phrase offered an intriguing philosophical problem. “‘Amma baad’ is impossible to capture. The moment you say, ‘amma baad,’ you are already in what came after – of what comes after that moment of transition,” he says. “I wanted to take something inexpressible and give it visual form.”

Works by Ayman Zedani, Faisal Samra, and Fatima Al-Banawi on show in the world’s first travelling contemporary art biennale showcase the transformation currently taking place in the Kingdom

“We welcome very much the participation of  artists  from around the world – it renews us and keeps us fresh,” says Cecilia Cavanagh, Director of the Pavilion of Fine Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) where this month three Saudi  conceptual artists are exhibiting works  at Bienalsur., the Southern Hemisphere’s contemporary art event.

Saudi Arabian artist Zahrah Al-Ghamdi contributes an installation made of leather and cotton thread. The artist told Arab News last month that she is inspired by the land artists of the 1970s, and their “ability to use raw materials to express their feelings. They helped me to see ‘nothing’ as something important.”