London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 24, 2025

Misk Art Week showcases artists from Saudi Arabia and international community

Misk Art Week showcases artists from Saudi Arabia and international community

Inside Riyadh’s Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall, multimedia artworks are displayed across the venue’s two floors on the theme of Takween, which means “form” in Arabic, and its relation to one’s identity.

As part of Misk Art Week’s fifth outing, taking place until Dec. 5, artists from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, North Africa and the wider international community present art that questions identity — specifically how an individual’s social, historical and cultural origins influence their past, present and future.

From video works produced with AI to paintings, textile-based art and installations, the art on show aims, according to the Misk Art Institute, to offer a “critical platform for the creative community,” fostering cultural dialogue and intellectual exchange.


As visitors enter the hall, they are confronted by two dark figures by Saudi artist Filwa Nazer, made of black polyethylene industrial netting and titled The Other is Another Body (2021). The figures seem to guard the vibrantly colored wool-weave tapestry work hanging on a wall between them, titled Palm (1985), by American artist Sheila Hicks.

The works are part of Here, Now, the third in a series of the Misk Art Institute’s annual flagship exhibition, curated this time by British writer and curator Sacha Craddock alongside Misk’s assistant curators, Nora Algosaibi and Alia Ahmad Al-Saud.

The show, which features a mix of emerging and established artists and runs until Jan. 30, 2022, is the first in the Saudi capital to present works by both Saudi and international artists, including ones by well-known Saudi artists such as Manal Al-Dowayan’s abstract black and white work, I am Here (2016), Ayman Yossri Daydban’s Tree House (2019), and Sami Ali AlHossein’s colorful abstract figurative works on canvas. There is also a painting by renowned Sudanese painter Salah Elmur titled The Angry Singer (2015) and delicate floral drawings by Korean artist Young In Hong dating to 2009.

While without an overarching narrative, the show prompts the spectator to question, like the exhibition’s title, “why here and why now?” It encourages the visitor to reflect on the artworks and the nature of identity in a reflective, personal and subjective manner.

Upstairs is Under Construction, an exhibition of Misk Art Grant recipients who hail this year from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Algeria. The grant funds up to SR1 million ($266,632) and has been distributed among the nine participating artists and collectives.

Basma Al-Shathry, lead curator at Misk Art Institute, said: “This year’s Misk Art Grant exhibition, ‘Under Construction,’ explores how identity is perceived as an emblem of growth, continuity and endless iterations of cultural representation throughout history. It has been a delight to bring together artists and designers from both the Middle East and North Africa to address the theme as a process of development, repetition, distortion and incompleteness in a time of synthesis, understanding and promise for the future.”

Mira AlMazrooei and Jawaher AlMutairi’s “Glass Libary” (2021). Part of the Misk Art Grant exhibition titled  “Under construction” at Misk Art Week 2021.


The works on show also respond to the theme of identity while focusing on how identity can be perceived as a method for growth and renewal, as well as social and historical continuity, via the incorporation of cultural representations throughout history.

One of the most poignant works is by Emirati artist and designer Latifa Saeed’s Sand Room (2021), which presents an assembly of sand-encased glass panels in the form of a cube that one can enter to observe the desert sand sediments that she collected from construction sites around Dubai.

Latifa Saeed’s “Sand room” (2021). Part of the Misk Art Grant exhibition titled “Under Construction” at Misk Art Week 2021.


“My research and work is always about transformation, whether it be of a city or of one’s mentality,” Saeed told Arab News. “I began by building an archive of sand from Dubai because the sites from where I collected the sand we cannot visit anymore because they are now construction sites.

Saeed visited development sites in Dubai, and before the construction started she would collect sand from the area and label it accordingly. She now has more than 200 different types of sand from these areas.

“I am archiving, preserving and documenting the Dubai landscape, topography and the material itself,” she said.

Near to Saeed’s mesmerizing room of sand specimens is Emirati artist Afra Al-Dhaheri’s End of a School Braid (2021) — a large installation of twisted and backcombed off-white colored rope that hangs from the ceiling. In this piece Al-Dhaheri examines how hair can be seen as the keeper of memories, preserving not only time but cultural norms and heritage.

Bahraini artist Noor Alwan’s Sacred Spaces (2021), a series of hanging textile-based tapestry works, similarly seeks to preserve personal and collective memories. Growing up, she would watch her grandfather ritually draw hundreds of patterns on paper — a tradition that stemmed from his childhood and that immersed him in a meditative process of repetition. Alwan recalls his trance-like process of art creation and likens it to a shared Arab collective practice — with elements mirroring the mesmerizing geometric forms of Islamic art.

Nour Alwan’s “Sacred Spaces,” (2021). Part of the Misk Art Grant exhibition titled “Under Construction” at Misk Art Week 2021. (


Moving into the rapidly developing digital landscape is an engaging work by Saudi artist Obaid Alsafi, titled Beyond Language (2021), in which a poem by the late revered Saudi poet Muhammad Al-Thubaiti Poetry (1952-2011), titled Salutation to the Master of the Arid Land, is transformed into a video work with sound via artificial intelligence. For the work, which captivates the viewer through its colorful abstract images — some seem like palm trees while others appear to be figures — Alsafi trained the AI through data collection and machine learning to understand poetry and produce visual representations of each verse with accompanying machine-made sound.

Hana Almilli’s “Through The Earth I Come Back Home” (2021). Part of the Masaha Residency showcase during Misk Art Week 2021.



“The first form of art in the region and the way we connected with each other was through poetry,” Alsafi, an artist who studied computer science, told Arab News. “Al-Thubaiti, one of Saudi’s pioneer poets, changed the way that poetry was written and read. Everyone sees AI as robotic, but my vision, I want to see how we can make the machine more human so that it understands language, learn and develop artwork depending on the vision of the artist. I believe artists can use AI as a tool to develop their work.”

Lastly, there is the second iteration of works created in the Masaha residency program, located in the basement of the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall.

The program, part of Misk Art Institute’s mission to support Saudi and international practitioners across the artistic disciplines in the research and production of new works via mentorship opportunities, can be viewed on the ground floor. Titled HOME: Being and Belonging, the works by 10 visual artists from the UK, Guatemala, Morocco, India, South Korea, and from across Saudi Arabia, examine questions of how an individual and collective sense of belonging and nostalgia for one’s culture and heritage stems from one’s socio-cultural and ethnic background. The works on show explore how our sense of belonging changes and transforms with time.

The residency offers international artists the opportunity to create work on site at Masaha over a three-month cycle. Many of the participating artists are showing their work for the first time in the Kingdom — demonstrating once again Misk Art Institute’s broader aims to expand Saudi Arabia’s cultural landscape through international creative dialogue.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
China and Russia Deploy Seductive Espionage Networks to Infiltrate U.S. Tech Sector
Apple’s ‘iPhone Air’ Collapses After One Month — Another Major Misstep for the Tech Giant
Graham Potter Begins New Chapter as Sweden Head Coach on Short-Term Deal
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa Alleges Poison Plot via Chocolate and Jam
Lakestar to Halt External Fundraising as Investor in Revolut and Spotify
U.S. Innovation Ranking Under Scrutiny as China Leads Output Outputs but Ranks 10th
Three Men Arrested in London on Suspicion of Spying for Russia
Porsche Reverses EV Strategy as New CEO Bets on Petrol and Hybrids
Singapore’s Prime Minister Warns of ‘Messy’ Transition to Post-American Global Order
Andreessen Horowitz Sets Sights on Ten-Billion-Dollar Fund for Tech Surge
US Administration Under President Donald Trump Reportedly Lifts Ban on Ukraine’s Use of Storm Shadow Missiles Against Russia
‘Frightening’ First Night in Prison for Sarkozy: Inmates Riot and Shout ‘Little Nicolas’
White House Announces No Imminent Summit Between Trump and Putin
US and Qatar Warn EU of Trade and Energy Risks from Tough Climate Regulation
Apple Challenges EU Digital Markets Act Crackdown in Landmark Court Battle
Nicolas Sarkozy begins five-year prison term at La Santé in Paris
Japan stocks surge to record as Sanae Takaichi becomes Prime Minister
This Is How the 'Heist of the Century' Was Carried Out at the Louvre in Seven Minutes: France Humiliated as Crown with 2,000 Diamonds Vanishes
China Warns UK of ‘Consequences’ After Delay to London Embassy Approval
France’s Wealthy Shift Billions to Luxembourg and Switzerland Amid Tax and Political Turmoil
"Sniper Position": Observation Post Targeting 'Air Force One' Found Before Trump’s Arrival in Florida
Shouting Match at the White House: 'Trump Cursed, Threw Maps, and Told Zelensky – "Putin Will Destroy You"'
Windows’ Own ‘Siri’ Has Arrived: You Can Now Talk to Your Computer
Thailand and Singapore Investigate Cambodian-Based Prince Group as U.S. and U.K. Sanctions Unfold
‘No Kings’ Protests Inflate Numbers — But History Shows Nations Collapse Without Strong Executive Power
Chinese Tech Giants Halt Stablecoin Launches After Beijing’s Regulatory Intervention
Manhattan Jury Holds BNP Paribas Liable for Enabling Sudanese Government Abuses
Trump Orders Immediate Release of Former Congressman George Santos After Commuting Prison Sentence
S&P Downgrades France’s Credit Rating, Citing Soaring Debt and Political Instability
Ofcom Rules BBC’s Gaza Documentary ‘Materially Misleading’ Over Narrator’s Hamas Ties
Diane Keaton’s Cause of Death Revealed as Pneumonia, Family Confirms
Former Lostprophets Frontman Ian Watkins Stabbed to Death in British Prison
"The Tsunami Is Coming, and It’s Massive": The World’s Richest Man Unveils a New AI Vision
Outsider, Heroine, Trailblazer: Diane Keaton Was Always a Little Strange — and Forever One of a Kind
Dramatic Development in the Death of 'Mango' Founder: Billionaire's Son Suspected of Murder
Two Years of Darkness: The Harrowing Testimonies of Israeli Hostages Emerging From Gaza Captivity
EU Moves to Use Frozen Russian Assets to Buy U.S. Weapons for Ukraine
Europe Emerges as the Biggest Casualty in U.S.-China Rare Earth Rivalry
HSBC Confronts Strategic Crossroads as NAB Seeks Only Retail Arm in Australia Exit
U.S. Chamber Sues Trump Over $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee
Shenzhen Expo Spotlights China’s Quantum Step in Semiconductor Self-Reliance
China Accelerates to the Forefront in Global Nuclear Fusion Race
Yachts, Private Jets, and a Picasso Painting: Exposed as 'One of the Largest Frauds in History'
Australia’s Wedgetail Spies Aid NATO Response as Russian MiGs Breach Estonian Airspace
McGowan Urges Chalmers to Cut Spending Over Tax Hike to Close $20 Billion Budget Gap
Victoria Orders Review of Transgender Prison Placement Amid Safety Concerns for Female Inmates
U.S. Treasury Mobilises New $20 Billion Debt Facility to Stabilise Argentina
French Business Leaders Decry Budget as Macron’s Pro-Enterprise Promise Undermined
Trump Claims Modi Pledged India Would End Russian Oil Imports Amid U.S. Tariff Pressure
×