Representing Saudi Arabia at the 60th Venice Biennale, Manal AlDowayan is recognised for her research-driven practice centring the politics of visibility, memory, and gender.
Read MoreManal AlDowayan was born in 1973 in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. She received a BSc in Computer Information Systems at Suffolk University, Boston, in 1999 and an MSc in Systems Analysis and Design at the London Metropolitan University in 2003.
AlDowayan had wanted to study art but was concerned about its financial practicality. While she was studying in London, her mother secretly sent her money, which she used to attend art classes at Central Saint Martins and Slade School of Fine Art.
An instructor for her photography course encouraged her to create an exhibition proposal, which led her to exhibit her work for the first time in a group exhibition in Burgos, Spain, in 2003.
After completing her master's, she returned to Saudi Arabia and worked at the petroleum refinery company Aramco. In 2009, AlDowayan was invited as an artist resident at the Delfina Foundation in London, finally finding the courage to define her work as an artist.
Following a stint of residencies and fellowships in Cairo, Doha, and Florida, AlDowayan returned to London and received an MA in Contemporary Art Practice in Public Spheres from the Royal College of Art in 2018.
AlDowayan's work across photography, sculpture, sound, and participation reflects on ideas of historicity and collective memory to shed light on the experience of Saudi women.
AlDowayan's early artistic explorations were through black-and-white photography. In the photographic series 'The Choice' (2005), veiled women holding different objects, including a tennis racket and a football, draw out tensions between tradition and suppression.
They look directly at the camera, placing focus on the often-underappreciated dreams and achievements of women. This thread is likewise noted in the series 'I Am' (2005), which reflects on women's labour and unemployment rates through portraiture.
Through photography and installation, AlDowayan has challenged collective memory and addressed the act of forgetting. In If I Forget You Don't Forget Me (2012), photographs show the personal effects of oil families, around whom AlDowayan grew up, compiled into a portrait.
Casting her lens on domestic objects, such as framed photos, plaques, and helmets inside homes, AlDowayan shows the swiftly changing labour landscape in Saudi Arabia. Each image charts intimate moments families shared as they dreamt of a future together.
In the installation Crash (2014[OO1] ), AlDowayan reflects on news reports of car crashes involving women teachers appointed to remote villages in Saudi Arabia. For this project, she dissects how tragedy is memorialised and the effect of omitting women's names from news and society.
AlDowayan has since turned to textile and tapestry to explore Saudi histories and lineage. In Their Love is Like All Loves, Their Death is Like All Deaths (2023), AlDowayan investigates the contents of archaeological digs in Saudi Arabia to which she adds her own fictional histories.
'The title is meant to differentiate the past from the present, but we are all part of one narrative. This exhibition feels like an archive that enables me to understand who I am and where I belong,' AlDowayan told Ocula Magazine in 2024.
AlDowayan has also explored participation through works like Suspended Together (2011), an installation of ceramic doves inscribed with permission documents from Saudi women, which allow them to travel within the country. Alluding to their shared experience of confinement, AlDowayan likens their condition to a flock of doves ready for flight.
Commissioned by Desert X and the Royal Commission of Al-Ula, Now You See Me Now You Don't (2021) is an interactive piece consisting of 12 trampolines installed in the desert. Modelled after water puddles, the installation draws attention to resource scarcity and ecological crisis.
AlDowayan's Saudi Pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale, Shifting Sands: A Battle Song, sought to showcase the shifting role of women in Saudi Arabia. The project includes participatory workshops encouraging women to 'look within themselves and to lean on their community of women'.
AlDowayan is the recipient of the 2023 Visual Arts Award, Ministry of Culture Saudi Arabia.
Manal AlDowayan's work has been widely exhibited in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Select solo exhibitions include Desert AlUla, Saudi Arabia (2024); Sabrina Amrani, Madrid; Misk Art Institute, Riyadh (both 2023); Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2018); and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2014).
Selected group exhibitions include Venice Biennale, Italy (2024); Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louvre Abu Dhabi (both 2023); British Museum, London; Diriyah Biennale, Saudi Arabia (both 2021); Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2018); and Gwangju Museum, South Korea (2014).
The artist lives and works between London, U.K., and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Manal AlDowayan is represented by Sabrina Amrani, Madrid.
The artist's website is here, her Instagram here.
Arianna Mercado | Ocula | 2024
