Nisma Rafiq

Saudi Gazette

Celebrated feminist and a Saudi conceptual artist Manal Aldowyan has always come up with unique ideas for her exhibitions. She has always focused on women’s right in Saudi Arabia, and has used art as a medium to project her thoughts.



Born and raised in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Aldowyan has proved herself in several residencies and exhibitions held locally and internationally. Her recent exhibition in Dubai’s Cuadro Art Gallery named ‘CRASH’ addresses the issue of female teachers.



It explores the phenomena of women teachers in Saudi Arabia being appointed to teach in remote villages across the country. Some of these teachers die in gruesome car crashes for a variety of reasons, with reports on these accidents appearing in the press on a weekly basis.



The project scrutinizes how these tragedies are memorialized; where the events unfolded and how the details were recorded. Because of local traditions linked to hiding women’s names to protect the honor of the tribe, the deceased teachers’ names are never mentioned in the media.



‘CRASH’ questioned the fact on how to protest a loss of something deemed inexistent? How to mourn if the suffering has no face? How to memorialize if the memory is suppressed?



Through her work, she highlighted the gap between newspaper reports of the accidents and the actual tragedies.



“CRASH is related to the visibility of the female gender name in Saudi Arabia, and it is a current reality that is quiet tragic and repetitive,” Aldowayan told Saudi Gazette. “Through ‘CRASH’ I wished to simply reflect this issue in the art context in order to bring forward the way the female gender dying in an accident becomes less human without a name, causing it to be trapped in a numbered percentage”



It centers on the reported articles and images that omit the names of the car accident victims and where none of the teacher’s bodies can be seen. These created images that neither feature human, nor death erases the last remaining traces of a teacher, a woman, a human. Aldowayan’s project portrayed the possibility to question the psychology behind the desensitization to these women’s deaths and relationship to the media’s repeated elimination of their identities.



This project is a collection of physical data synthesized by an artist who reuses the photograph, not to mirror the image of the event, but to create an emotionally driven visual representation of the undocumented loss of these women. It examines the power of single image and its ability to affect human emotion.



“I tried to reinstate the image and its capability to shock and instigate remembering,” Aldowyan explained. “I experimented with the idea of authenticity and acceptance into memory by balancing the factual representation and visual beauty.”



“There are no images of bodies in my work, and this subject is traumatic. However, I am simply highlighting an aspect of a current reality, turning attention towards the reduction of the human aspect of teachers who risk their lives to make minimal money,” she said.



The synthesized images condemn an act of negligence to human life while making the viewer absorb the horror of the crash. The exhibition offered the chance to discuss wider concerns regarding traditions and future perspectives on social and political positioning of women, and reflections about the active erasure of women.



Her successful exhibition, which ended late April, received positive feedback from the community. “There was a lot of intrigue and an interest in the research being present in the work,” she said.



She shared her upcoming projects, stating: “I am starting a research fellowship with New York University of Abu Dhabi and I have a show opening in Gwangju, South Korea, in September titled “Songs of Loss, Songs of Love” and another show “Prospect.2” in October opening in New Orleans, USA.”