"The Identity and Disappearance of the Saudi Woman." It's a very serious title. I know.
But in reality most of my work focuses on on this. This is sort of
underlying theme that I always address when I approach projects. Because women
have not been documented historically in my country in a lot of countries and the
people who wrote history wrote it the way they wanted it to be written.
And today there's encouragement of covering a woman's face, lowering her voice, not
saying her name. And I feel this instigates forgetting and disappearance.
In 2005 our current king took the throne and part of his speech he gave a sort of
very hopeful talk about women and men both are going to come together and
build this country.
I got very excited a lot of women did and after his speech a
dialogue broke out with journalists and opinion leaders about... no women are not
going to work in all over the place there's going to be jobs that suits her
nature that she's going to work in. And it got me thinking what suits my nature
as a woman. And who decides what suits my nature.
I am an educator she's a
professor and what's written on the board is ignorance is darkness.
I concluded the whole collection with I am a Saudi citizen where I actually make a
very obvious statement that I want to belong to this landscape I want to
belong to the society.
For about a year me and my mother would find these
articles that talked about so-and-so woman won an award so-and-so woman was
gone to went to a conference so-and-so woman donated money to a charity and
they would always use the same image. Just the black ghosts. The ones that have
0 faces 0 character and it wasn't that they did
multiple pictures of these ghosts they just use the same one they didn't bother
shooting different pictures of these black ghosts.
And this document is the
permission slip that every woman in Saudi Arabia needs to get from her male
guardian in order to travel. My male guardian is my youngest brother and I
placed it on the fiberglass dove and then invited almost I sent an email out
to a few women asking would you like to donate your travel slips for art
projects at that point I was not very well known in Saudi Arabia so I expected
nobody would respond and give me such a delicate document with their information
and I was shocked to have almost 100 women donate their travel documents to
go to this project because it was a statement they wanted to participate in
so you have some sitting and eating on the floor so I'm hanging out on the
sides and some floating in the sky so in reality what I was trying to serve
formulate does that Saudi women when you look at them you think they look like
doves they're floating in the sky they and their amazing but in reality they're
suspended there's a phenomenon in Saudi Arabia right now it's very fairly new
where it's not something that comes from traditions young men will not say the
names of their wives mothers daughters in front of other men it's something
that they want to hide and and it's shameful to pronounce it so they would
call their wives my family or the madam or any other thing but not the name and
then I just posted on my website do you want to be part of my artwork 400 women
across the kingdom responded and registered so as an overwhelming
response I didn't know what to do i explain to them that the artwork is
going to tour the world you're going to write your full name on a piece of bead
with your own handwriting full name and it will be displayed and we're going to
be very proud of displaying these artworks so women
from all over sandy so I started the tour from the east to the west and I
stopped in three major cities they started writing their names on these
beads and then finally they were displayed and Judah so there was this
wonderful energy and participatory art and this is where art connects with the
general society