Manal AlDowayan- Battle Cry 
By Jahel Sanzsalazar

Joost van den Vondel, a 17th-century Dutch playwright and poet, insisted “One woman is stronger than a thousand men”, and the Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan embodies it with eloquence and effectiveness. A spirited artist and skilled transgressor; her art is deeply attached to her place of birth, her gender, and to her era. Aware that it is through art that our minds can be changed, her works are the peaceful, gentle, and powerful weapon with which she both ignites and reflects the enormous social transformation her country is undergoing at this time.

The Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid, in the last month, presented a solo exhibition by the artist in the oasis of Al-‘Ula (“Their Love is Like All Loves, Their Death is Like All Deaths”, from February 19 to March 23, 2024) curated by Jal Hamad, which has drawn a significant Saudi audience since its opening. Not only does she explore personal themes such as reconciliation or healing, but AlDowayan also celebrates the cultural recovery of a historical past of Saudi Arabia that until recently remained hidden. She uses motifs from the recently discovered archaeological remains of the Nabatean, Dadanite, and Lihyanite peoples, who successively inhabited these regions before the Islamic era. The desert rose, a reoccurring symbol in her work, is magnified on rustic Indian silk, and serves as a support for these printed motifs; elements that blend with the symbolic language with which AlDowayan has always addressed taboos without a need for more forceful confrontations.

In Al-‘Ula, concurrent to the solo exhibition, is a second installation of drawings (“Oasis of Stories: Manal AlDowayan and the People of Al-‘Ula”, curated by Iwona Blazwick), the result of participatory workshops in which the artist invited the entire community to contribute ‘a work of art’, something many may have never done; resulting in an impressive number of sketches, poems and even recipes, which will form the basis of the large-scale installation the artist is preparing for the Wadi AlFann valley, scheduled for 2026.

AlDowayan graduated with honours in Computer Information Systems to please her father. It was in London where she acquired her artistic education, thanks to the money her mother sent her secretly. Since then, she has established herself on the international art scene, and today is recognised as the leading woman artist in her country, inspiring future generations, and being rewarded with the opportunity to represent Saudi Arabia at the Venice Biennale, which opened on April 17th and runs until November. Speaking before her leaving for Venice, she could not reveal a great deal about the pavilion as yet. But her installation promised much, and served to remind us how far the country has come.

Interview

­­Jahel Sanzsalazar (JS):Can you tell us something in advance about the piece you are creating for the Venice Biennale? Can you explain how it relates to the solo show and the participative work you have presented in AlUla?

Manal AlDowayan (MA): They carry different things that are very similar, bringing the form of the desert rose, there will be a huge soft sculpture, which will be used as a body, as a vehicle, and as a tool to communicate. I will be printing very important things on the body of the sculpture, as I did in AlUla, where I printed Nabatean gods and sculptures that are symbols in my works. This new piece has a huge participatory element, and benefits from workshops that I run for years, starting from my native town and going back to the places that hosted me when things were very restrictive in Saudi Arabia; these are places that believed in me, that trusted in me and created a safe space for me and my practice. Almost a thousand women attended. There were a lot of people turned back at the door for safety reasons. The halls were packed. There was a huge desire in the community to participate in my contemporary work. I explained what Venice Biennale was, and how, throughout my career, the reason that I felt confident, protected and had the energy to move forward with my work, is because of the support of my community of women. And I really wanted to come back to this community for this very special moment in Venice. I am creating a battle song for women, preparing them for the next phase of how women will enter the public sphere in Saudi Arabia. The harmony is a hum that I kept in my mind for many years, a unique sound, the sound that is produced by the sand in the dunes of the desert. It is called the “singing sands”.  The ones in Saudi Arabia have never been documented scientifically. When the granules of sand rub against each other, they can create this very echoed deep sound, a guttural sound, a hum that I recorded with sonic microphones, as one of the different elements that I will be using in the Venice Biennale. These are different elements that I am giving you clues to, the total concept we leave it to when we arrive in Venice.