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Table of Content Preface A Message From The Minister Of Culture Of Saudi Arabia HH Prince Badr Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al Saud After Illusion… The Pavilion After Illusion… Nada Shabout and Eiman Elgibreen Envisioning Illusion: Critical Reading of Zahrah al-Ghamdi’s Artworks Lina Kattan After Illusion… The Discourse On The Complete And What Is Above Completion On The Whole And On The Total Ibn Sina (Translated by Michael E. Marmura) Simulacra And Simulations Jean Baudrillard Humans As They Construct Their Illusions Abdullah Al Ghathami Positive Illusions And New Venture Creation: Conceptual Issues And An Empirical Illustration Geir Grundvåg Ottesen and Kjell Grønhaug Contemporary Art and Society in Saudi Arabia Mona Khazindar The Illusion Of The Image And The Reality Of Its Representation Abdulrahman Alsoliman Food For Thought “Al Muallaqat” Maha Malluh Mu’allaqa Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā One Of The Original Seven Odes
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La Biennale di Venezia Biennale Arte 2019. A message from the Minister of Culture of Saudi Arabia His Highness Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al Saud Minister of Culture
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s presence at the 58th International Art Exhibition at Biennale Arte 2019 marks an important milestone for our cultural sector. In an era of unprecedented change taking place across the Kingdom, the culture sector has been given a new dedicated focus under Vision 2030, the Kingdom’s blueprint for a modern, diverse economy led by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Launched in June 2018, the Ministry of Culture – the first in the Kingdom’s history – is now leading efforts to meet the ambitious targets within Vision 2030. In March 2019, the Ministry set out a new cultural vision for the Kingdom, providing a roadmap for a flourishing of arts and culture across Saudi Arabia that enriches lives, celebrates national identity and builds understanding between people.
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Saudi Arabia’s presence at Biennale Arte 2019 is an extension of that vision and reflects the Kingdom’s ambition to build new cultural bridges with the world. This year we launch our first permanent National Pavilion at the Biennale, creating a dedicated space to showcase the very best of Saudi talent right here in the centre of one of the world’s cultural capitals. In doing this, we aim to provide a new platform for Saudi creatives at the premier forum in the art and architecture calendar, making their work accessible to new global audiences. The centerpiece of this year’s pavilion, Zahrah Al Ghamdi’s exhibition After Illusion, speaks to the importance of cultural memory and identity as a foundation for growth. Inspired by the poetry of Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā, After Illusion emphasises the importance of reconnecting with the past while taking new, bold steps into the future. This resonates deeply with what we, the Ministry of Culture, are trying to achieve. The following pages will bring to life the wealth of ideas and creativity on display this year. On behalf of the Ministry of Culture, I welcome you to Saudi Arabia’s National Pavilion.
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Fig. 1
Details from After Illusion during the making process, Jeddah, 2019. © Motaz Kattan
Fig. 2
Details from After Illusion during the making process, Jeddah, 2019. © Motaz Kattan
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Envisioning Illusion: Critical Reading of Zahrah Alghamdi’s Artworks Lina M. Kattan
Visiting the Saudi pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale encompasses walking, tip-toeing, touching, and standing in awe. Visitors will engage with the artwork, and relive the experience of creating art. The aesthetic beauty of the installation After Illusion predominantly lays within the process and the experience of creating art itself; it is a journey after the illusion (fig. 1-2). Specifically, the Saudi journey of art production involves departing from acknowledged and established experiments such as, among others, the legendary Safiya Binzagr’s figuration in her cultural scenes of the late sixties to arrive at a contemporary Saudi art prospect with Zahrah Alghamdi’s non-representational work. In this context, Saudi artists are concerned with the notion of merging both cultural traditions and aspects of globalization, as well as how these issues may affect their recognition across nations. Such artists are deciphering hidden cultural agendas and negative stereotypes of them to voice their agency through their art. These self-determined artists are paving the way for future generations to be accepted as equally partaking in constructing the global contemporary art scene. They are creating a positive change while balancing their national heritage and global developments. Consequently, to fulfill the future Vision of 2030, Saudi artists are reconsidering the recent shift in the status quo of the Kingdom. These rapid-paced changes are motivating artists to reimagine the future of Saudi art. Previous Works and Memory Alghamdi was born in the small village of al-Asalah, which is located in the southwestern region of the Kingdom. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Islamic Arts from King Abdul-Aziz University, and then travelled to the United Kingdom to obtain her Ph.D. in Art & Design from Coventry University.1 Currently, she is teaching at the University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 35
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Fig. 10
Zahrah Alghamdi, Inanimate Village, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Athr Gallery, Jeddah.
Fig. 11
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Zahrah Alghamdi, Inanimate Village, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Athr Gallery, Jeddah.
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One could notice the collaboration between hand, material, and time. At first glance, the cotton-filled leather discs seem like they have a life of their own. Their beauty stem from their unidentifiability. What intensifies the mystery is the positioning of the pieces in a way that they are “multiplying in parts and responsively adapting to the environment they have been allowed to settle in, for the audience to explore as they dare to”.8 In Alghamdi’s work, elements of skin and earthlytones reflect the physical properties of human beings, while technological components of light and sound celebrate the modern-day lifestyle. The binary oppositions contained in the work (past/present, living/inanimate, natural mediums/technological devices, human-made/machine-made, and earthlytones/artificial colors) represent how human beings nowadays are struggling to balance between their inner emotions and the external world. In other words, the advent of technology and related notions of globalism and diversity changed the traditions of creating and experiencing art. The Creative Process The creative yet tedious process became a trademark of Alghamdi’s work. This process is irreversible; leather cannot go back to its previous state. To some extent, leather as people, hardens with time. As human beings, we change when passing through challenging life experiences, and we cannot go back to our previous state. Similar to the hardened, boiled leather, uncertainties change us over time to become different individuals. We become more capable of facing upcoming obstacles. These pivotal times made us who we are now: tough, brave, and more experienced. No other forces can undo these transformations. Time and experience became the main component of this modification. Equally, the artist’s process of creating art may reflect on Saudi women’s roles in their houses, namely Alghamdi’s kitchen. Art is being prepared in her kitchen by using kitchen tools, and then served in the art gallery to feast viewers’ appetite. What do these relationships entail: females/kitchen, art/food, cotton/leather, and hard labor/pleasing others? Should creating art be an exhausting process, or should it be a pleasurable experience? The work provokes many open-ended uncertainties. Alghamdi’s work is all about the experience. The experience of creating and reliving art. When the visitor recognizes her work as a journey of artistic creation through time, she or he will appreciate its ambiguity. Alghamdi’s art may not be comprehensible at first glance, yet it is conspicuous. The maze-like flow between the pieces in the installation creates an endless possibility in which to interact and experience the work. Most importantly, the viewer is then able to appreciate the aesthetics of her works and its lengthy laborious process as these stages visualize a particular kind of fantasy. As such, visitors of the pavilion are encouraged to intimately interact with the installation at their own pace. This intimate interaction is intensified by the low-lit atmosphere, which in turn stimulate the viewers’ sentimentalities. The lighting of the space, the tactility, the outstretched pieces, and the overwhelming and surrounding presence of art, all render the illusory experience complete.
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, From the Fossils of Memories Series, 28 × 54 cm, mixed media on paper, 1988
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The Illusion of the Image and the Reality of Its Representation Abdulrahman Alsoliman
Signs, gestures, and blinking images that speed up and slow down, resembling each other and converging. Their dates successive, features clear. Perhaps it is my search after mystery or the unknown, perhaps it is seeking to capture moments that fade behind the fastpaced days, incidents and occurrences, and in search of the more personal. The past with all that it holds, its capacity, recalled with a full memory overflowing with details. I was born in a simple environment. My father loved calligraphy, and he excelled in its intricacies. My mother, I remember one day, implemented what my father used to illustrate on the furniture of our home. Paintings of birds, trees, and branches. Green, red, and yellow threads against white space are still vibrant in my memory. I was born and lived my childhood in an ancient city, Al-Ahsa, which combines nature and characteristics of beauty that is rich in agriculture, water, and industry. Various environments that diverge between Bedouin and urban, countryside, and city. All of these varieties converge in people’s lives, where they live, meet and the stations of these meetings in their daily and weekly lives. Their images which have preserved the city’s identity and personality (men, women, and children). It was a life full of energy, that pulled me towards the city’s markets, houses, mosques, handicrafts in all shapes and colors, various agricultural product with vibrant natural colors, palms that people use to manufacture their simple tools from, and a rug that the Bedouin lady makes, or carpet of beautiful threads. Its simple colors were selected according to pure intuition. What the manufacturers and artisans make (smiths, carpenters, and builders) etc.… There was a water well in every house, a yard, and the sun constructing lovely paintings with its rays that fell everywhere in the house. Walls in the color of mud or in white, shelves, arches, and variant shapes, as well as the simplicity of the buildings, their material and design.
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Images of cities, villages, and their captivating details that shaped my early perceptions. I was, and am still, keen on enriching my view of what remains of these images that have painted a picture of the city in its buildings with aesthetically charged architecture. In my early days, I was fascinated with recalling theses hidden images. However, conjuring these images has resulted in further digging, searching, and removing dust off times and places that I know or perhaps do not know. I would search for an image and would sometimes find it close by, soft, and sudden, emerging from its special time and from my vacant days. I try to bring it closer with my tools and colors which I hope would bring back to life the smell and perfume of my ancient places. My openness towards artistic experiment in the Arab world and globally since an early time has granted me the opportunity to search for new image and form. I was hoping to resurrect it through new different shape. Shape that does not go against my search for a modernity that is at least contemporary with my time, and which draws on its tools and accomplishments. I have lived a time that is full of events, incidents, and transformations. I lived through 1967 and I do not forget the sound of the radio in our house. Our teachers carrying radio devices and following the news of the war. Through to following years that did not lack in victories or defeats. I used to paint to the beat of many incidents, events and references. My paintings are not free of psychological and material influence. I return to my place in search of a special aesthetic, and a shape that is not submerged in the past except to emerge novel and different. Looking forward to a future that maintains knowledge, culture, civilization and distinction, as well as preserves the place and the personality.
Abdulrahman Alsoliman, From the Fossils of Memories Series, 36 × 48cm, mixed media on paper, 1988
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, From the Fossils of Memories Series, 32.5 × 48.5 cm, mixed media on paper, 1988
In the second half of the eighties, my painting was covered in green, moving in me emotions that were searching among the unknown for the shadow of a woman; or the phantom of a quiet city that lives its night as night should be, and of which daylight emerges as optimism should, with threads forming a new brighter and sweeter day. The color was in oil, water, ink, gouache, and different pencil colors. In my memory, things are mixed up. The palm of Al-Ahsa, a handmade rug alive with pure Bedouin taste, an embroidered dress in bright color, the contrast of dark thin threads in which only extenuate its exquisiteness. The shadows of people that converge and diverge. Desert landscapes as far as the eye can see. Machines, sounds, places and the songs of birds, rifles and tanks. Pictures of violence, cruelty, broadcasted in the media. These images and contrasts mix, and with them straight, dented, twisted and broken lines mix as well. My lines sketched with a ruler and my lines shaking. My anxiety in reality. Some optimism in my color from morning signs which light my dark nights. Green as nobody else can see as I have created. They project their selves and anxieties on it, thus turning its optimism into gloom; and sometimes to melancholy which I have known since the age of ten.
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, From the Fossils of Memories Series, 32.5 × 48.5 cm, mixed media on paper, 1988
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, From the Fossils of Memories Series, 27 × 46cm, mixed media on paper, 1988
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, part of Trace Series, 100 x 120 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2002
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, part of Trace Series, 100 × 120 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2002
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, part of Trace Series, 100 × 80 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2002
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Abdulrahman Alsoliman, part of Trace Series, 40.5 x 50.5 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2002
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Therefore, these hanging pots are both a salute to our literary heritage, as well as being a testament to our current need for everything visual. These pots speak of our revived archaeological search for our visual heritage, our culture that has been in the shadows of our literary heritage for so long. Without dismissing the significance and aesthetic beauty of the original muallaqat, this work both acknowledges the position poetry has in Arab culture and heritage, whilst simultaneously allowing for an engaging visual dialogue with the remainder of the world.
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Maha Malluh, Food for Thought “Almuallaqat” 3, 2015, The Mac Vienna, Vienna
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Maha Malluh, Food for Thought “Almuallaqat” 4, 2016, Art Jameel, Dubai, UAE
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مها الملوح ،غذاء الروح “المعلقات” ،2016 ،4أرت جميل، .دبي ،اإلمارات .تصوير معرض أرت جميل
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مها الملوح ،غذاء الروح “المعلقات” ،2014 ،1أرت بازيل .أنليميتد .2015تصوير جاليري كرينزينجر
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مها الملوح ،غذاء الروح “المعلقات” ،2014 ،1لوفر أبو ظبي، .اإلمارات .تصوير الفنانة سلمى الفرياني والحقوق للمعرض
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مها الملوح ،غذاء الروح ”المعلقات“ ،2014 ،1متحف .فورليندين ،هولندا .تصوير متحف فورليندن
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