The solo exhibition "Their Love Is Like all Loves, Their Death Is Like all Deaths" by Saudi Arabian contemporary female artist Manal Al Dwayne is currently on view at Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid. Like all Deaths" is on view at Sabrina Amrani in Madrid.Manal Al Dwayne's work involves photography, video, sculpture, installation, and public art, and she interposes a personal narrative in capturing the contradictory relationship between tradition, political regulation, and contemporary Saudi society. The film is a visual account of the rapid changes that Saudi Arabian society is undergoing in the midst of globalization.
>Ephemeral Witness, 2020
Born in Saudi Arabia in 1973,Manal Al Dwaynegrew up loving art, but her father believed that art could not be economically profitable. Like everyone else in the community, she went to work for an oil company. A few years later, while studying for her master's degree at London Metropolitan University, she used the money her mother secretly sent her to take art courses at Central Saint Martins in London and the University of London's Slade School of Fine Arts, earning a master's degree in contemporary public art practice. As a woman growing up in an Arab country,Manaldid not have the confidence to make art, nor did she feel she was allowed to do so. It was not until 2008, whenManalparticipated in the group exhibition "Marginal Arabia: Contemporary Art in Saudi Arabia" at SOAS Brunei Gallery in London, that she met some of the Saudi artists working in secret and witnessed the prestigious Jameel family's dedication to art, including the establishment of the Athr Gallery's establishment in Saudi Arabia, made her feel less alone.
>Manal's tapestry making process
In the war-torn Arab world, Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that has managed to maintain a largely stable regime and society. In the second half of the last century, Saudi Arabia achieved practical results in the experiment of interaction between Islamic tradition and modern globalized civilization, and also accelerated the modernization process of Arab countries. In the process, Saudi Arabia gradually affirmed the role of women in economic and social development and desegregated some gender measures, such as around 2016, when Saudi women were allowed to drive and some women's sports leagues were established, changes that, inManal's eyes, were like experiencing a historical process with the fast-forward button pressed-although her mother was only 22 years older than her, there seems to be no continuity between the two generations' experiences and historical contexts, as if they were separated by centuries. As an artist, a storyteller, whenManalgoes about capturing these changes, her aim is how to find answers to living with the past, with the present, by re-evaluating these changes. She sees words as a means of healing, as in the ambiguous expressions contained in neon works such as "We Were Speaking through Silence" (2010), where she attempts to remove the hegemony of men in writing that defines women in the representation of power in public spaces. In her "I Am" series,Manalportrays doctors, construction workers, divers and other professions typically associated with men, effectively highlighting the influence of Saudi women in a wide range of fields. In "Just Paper" (2019), she changes the rigid representations in books written by religious figures who portray women as delicate flowers and precious jewels to be protected, whichManalsees as the root of female bondage in the Arab world, by transferring them to a work as thin and fragile as an eggshell. She reprinted these onto porcelain as thin and fragile as an eggshell and rolled it up so that to read it she had to break through this fragile layer of perception.
>Manal's tapestry making process
This exhibition continuesManal's exploration of personal reconciliation and self-healing in Arab society and history, which began with her 2015 solo exhibition And I, Will I Forget?
More than five thousand years ago and up to the first century B.C., there was an overlap of different civilizations around the city now known as Alura. It was an oasis in the desert and an important stop on trade routes, but like many other civilizations around the world, these civilizations experienced collapse and extinction, leaving only fragmentary ruins buried in mainstream historiography. These ruins and monuments were rediscovered as archaeological excavations in Saudi Arabia intensified and the site of Hegra was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008. Dependent on the development of archaeology and history, the aesthetic, political and religious power of these ruins was recognized and disseminated. A new history unfolds beforeManal. The Arab narrative has always been centered on Islam, but standing in front of the ruins, she questions the Islamic lineage and dominance, trying to link the present to the Islamic ancestors, acknowledging the links with the ancient Egyptians, Nabataeans, Mesopotamians and Assyrians. As the artist attempts to capture the echelon in the chain of history, then historical change and social values likewise face reassessment.
Meeting these fragmented histories in the context of their own familiar lives, how does the artist view a story that has not been told in the face of these unfamiliar and distant inscriptions, languages and traditions? How do they respond to identity and collective memory?Manal's approach is to share their stories as if they were her own. She researches images and inscriptions discovered by archaeologists and adds her own imagined history to them through local folklore, poetry and crafts.
>Just Paper, 2019
The exhibition is laid out as an open labyrinth of analogies to life, inviting the viewer to walk and experience through it, finding paths of transformation that make sense to them. Labyrinths are an ancient spiritual tool for contemplation, andManaluses them as a means of spiritual transformation, with even a significant portion of the drawings and paintings in the exhibition presented in labyrinth patterns.Manalbuilt the walls of the labyrinth with rope, the middle part of which is called the "soul" and the rest of the rope is the "end" that wraps around the "soul," just as the artist found the present and the ancestors are wrapped around a historical line. The use of the ropes is not random, but as a symbol, they rise from the ground and hover in the air, hovering and swinging, and the light-permeable structure suggestsManal's attempt to untangle the bound history. And through the "walls," the viewer can simultaneously see the future or return to the past, depending on where he is standing at a given moment, whereManalimagines historical individuals as a point on a sphere, existing in the space in which they live today, both connected and dispersed, their love like all love, their death like all Their love is like all love, their death is like all death, and the contemporary artist who paints on stone is like all artists of that time. In this way, he tries to include "them" in his own present.
Oral narrative is alsoManal's way of perpetuating ancient civilizations, drawing inspiration from stories she heard from local people in Alura and from the poem "Standing in front of the ruins of Al-Bawi" by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish to create the mixed-media works "The Past Dreams of the The Past Dreams of the Future (2023) and the clay sculpture Standing at the Ruin (2023), in whichManalargues that the rationality of the past cannot be confirmed and that she is trying to break the current paranoia of people's perception of history.
>Now You See Me, Now You Don't
AsManalstudies the archaeological fragments, she also studies the artistic fragments she is creating. In the future, the fragments of the present will also be in ruins, and in the future, how does one leave a mark of perceiving the present? She hopes it will help her to accept her present. This emotion comes from the fragility of human nature and from a tacit recognition of the transience of history, whichManalexpresses in the form of "Desert Rose". Desert rose is also known as "Gobi stone", which is a flower-like mineral crystal aggregate. As a child,Manalused to dig for this stone in front of her house in Dhahran. In the exhibition, a floor sculpture in the shape of a desert rose and three hanging sculptures are carved with images of the remains of the Lihayan and Nabataean cultures.Manalhas used these shapes repeatedly to imprint her fears and concerns, and in the exhibition, whether it is textiles woven by artisans, or clay tiles from across Saudi Arabia, or inscriptions written on clay byManal, they all serve only to construct stories that are her own.
Article Source:艺术与设计
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