Artist Manal AlDowayan Echos the Voice of a Thousand Women

The 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is currently on view through November 24 in Venice, Italy. There, visceral, site-specific, and cross-generational works culminate in a journey through individual and collective identity, nostalgia, and metamorphosis. Under the curation of Adriano Pedrosa, the theme of Stranieri Ovunque, ”Foreigners Everywhere,” artist Manal AlDowayan, alongside curators Jessica Cerasi, Maya El Khalil, and assistant curator Shadin AlBulaihed, created work for the Saudi Arabia Pavilion.

The exhibition “Shifting Sands: A Battle Song” united more than one thousand Saudi Arabian women from diverse communities. During three immersive workshops in Al Khobar, Jeddah, and Riyadh, mothers and daughters, friends and family, developed with AlDowayan the very personal texts, drawings, and vibrant recordings that radiate across the lyrical, multimedia installation. The artist welcomed the women within her sincere realm of free and jubilant expression to explore both visibility and invisibility in their country and the international media landscape. Whitewall had the opportunity to sit down with AlDowayan to speak about the transformative moment unfolding in her country, supporting women in authoring their own vivid battle song and deconstructing the system through solidarity with no conditions. 

WHITEWALL: What was your primary inspiration behind the multidimensional exhibition “Shifting Sands: A Battle Song” for the Saudi Arabia Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, and its relationship to the sweeping theme of Stranieri Ovunque—” Foreigners Everywhere”?

MANAL ALDOWAYAN: This artwork’s main inspiration is this incredibly strange, in a good way, transformative moment that’s happening within the community of women in my country. Most of my works have been documents of these changes, sometimes monumental, sometimes very small, in a society that’s transforming itself. I’m compelled to make work at those moments. 

I didn’t know that I had a theme of this kind, but when I look back now, especially preparing for Venice, I notice that I was definitely making artwork that captured the moment where something is visible and is becoming invisible—or vice versa. This was the main inspiration. 

Then I started thinking about the theme of “Foreigners Everywhere” by Adriano Pedrosa. The idea of marginalized communities, or people living on the edge of society. For me, a woman’s experience, especially an Arab Muslim woman’s experience in her own country and globally, is a complex one. With everyone obsessed with looking under the veil, the exoticization, sexualization, and orientalization of women is a constant machine that exists. My work over the years has been closely linked to the media. I started looking at media locally for one of my projects called State of Disappearance, where I look at how local newspapers used to print pictures of Saudi women.

At the Heart of Manal AlDowayan’s Exhibition is the Voice of Women

They wrote an article about Saudi women and the pictures that they put next to these articles…I did a whole artwork around that—obscuring her face, always in a crowd, dehumanizing her without giving her a name. Again, I did it in a project called Crash, where I looked at women teachers who drive to remote villages and die in violent car crashes. I was just looking at the media, how it covered this, and never mentioning their names. 

Then I kept working on this idea of what a repeated image means to a person. I came to New York, which was last year at the Guggenheim, and I did a performance. But I told them, I’m not going to self-orientate myself. I need to look at your archives and how your own archives look at women in your own society—American women. It was shocking to find these books. They’re old, yes, but some were new. I also use some Instagram posts because now that’s our new media. When I arrived in New York, suddenly my Instagram changed. How do you make your butt tighter, erase menopause, and your stomach?

I felt like it was a machine that was working to sow doubt in myself. This artwork, personally, is about a journey I’ve had with self-definition, understanding who I am as a woman that exists within this context, and how I’ve spent most of my life responding to others, and how they want to define me. I always have to speak to that instead of really looking away from it and thinking internally. That’s why the artwork has two sculptures that carry the cacophony of media and the usual words used to define Saudi women. In the heart, I put the voice of the women who participated in this art.

“This artwork’s main inspiration is this incredibly strange, in a good way, transformative moment that’s happening within the community of women in my country,”

— Manal AlDowayan

WW: Can you describe the process of inviting women from diverse areas of Saudi Arabia to participate in the creation of your project? Was there a specific age range?

MAD: The locations where I held my projects were just three main cities in Saudi. It wasn’t that these cities had any special element other than being a major city. That means huge populations compared to places I work in, like Al-Ula in the north of Saudi, where I work with the community there as I’m producing a large land art project. 

With this one, I just wanted to go to the cities. I also went back to the same spaces that hosted me 10, 15 years ago when I did other participatory work. But back then, the Minister of Culture was not supporting me. There was no art scene. It was an underground grassroots movement. These women-only spaces just opened their doors for free. They never made me pay for anything. They called their members and told them, come, let’s support this girl. It’s just part of our community. It’s very, very sweet.  I really wanted to go back to these spaces and take them with me to Venice.

There was no age range. It was open to children, elders—everyone. Actually, in Riyadh, we even invited some orphanages to come and join in the session. We had people from every walk of life, and they all belong to these communities. The places I went to were vocational training centers or charities that support women. They are already members or a member adjacent, like the cousin of a member or something like that. It was really a gathering of communities. 

The process was just that we said, let’s post it. I usually post it on my Instagram and see who shows up. Usually, 100 women would come to each session, which is pretty good for someone that’s not very well known. This time, I’m quite well known in my country. I’ve been working for many years, and we put it up on the Minister of Culture’s Instagram. And in Riyadh alone, in two hours, 350 women signed up. We had a huge number of women, around a thousand, sign up to three workshops, and they were wonderful—festival-like. We did a lot of things in these workshops.

“We had people from every walk of life, and they all belong to these communities,”

— Manal AlDowayan

WW: What was your reaction to the positive response you received?

MAD: I was quite high on adrenaline because I was trying to author a workshop that will give me one result that will lead to an artwork in Venice. It was very hard for me to just woohoo and relax. I wanted to make sure that I captured everything. For me, it was a big validation that everyone understood the concept. That’s the riskiest and scariest part for a participatory work for an artist. 

I decided to make it super dense. I taught them everything. I showed them what the Venice Biennale is, and what artwork looks like in Venice, and why it is important to understand Venice. Then I showed them a little bit of my artwork throughout the years—this is what I’ve made before, who has participated in these workshops? The sea of hands goes up, and I’d be like, great, this is your second time with me. No, it’s my third, my fourth! Or some are completely new to this workshop. 

Creating a Battle Song for Saudi Women

Then I would show them newspaper articles that I’ve collected with my team. We’ve been researching. We have almost 3,000 articles that we’ve categorized by language, by theme, everything. I showed them a series, and I asked them, do you really feel that these titles define who you are today? How do you feel about this media constantly talking about you in such a demeaning way? The reaction was, hell, no. 

I told them, first thing we do is draw, and then the second thing is group singing. With the drawings, I said, imagine yourself, because we are creating a battle song for ourselves. We’re entering a new phase in our country as women. We are redefining public space. We are reassessing how our bodies exist in these spaces. A battle song in Arabic sounds very different from what an English one means. It’s just a readiness, getting ready to do something—prepare yourself. When you have a battle song in Saudi, usually the men stand on the sides and the poet is in the center. The poet would recite a line of the poem, and the guys repeat it. I told them, Imagine yourself like you are the poet, and this is your dance troupe.

“I said, imagine yourself, because we are creating a battle song for ourselves,”

Manal AlDowayan

What would you say to them to give them courage, to give them energy, to go into battle with no fear? They wrote and they drew, and then they started asking for the microphone. Something always happens in my workshops, people suddenly feel compelled to say something. So I give them a microphone. Sometimes mothers call me over, my daughter wants to say something. Actually, she wants to say it, but she’s too shy, so she makes her daughter say it. It’s a really lovely moment of finding your voice in a safe space. Creating safe spaces is part of the workshop energy that I try to create. 

After they finished drawing, I told them to do a couple of breathing exercises. We had a singing coach with us in the workshops, and we started taking a deep breath and releasing. I gave them headphones, and I told them to listen to a sound that I had recorded in the desert with my team. We went down to the South of Saudi Arabia, where there’s a unique sand dune in the empty quarter that hums when the sand grains rub against each other.

We put it in our headphones, and I told them to harmonize with the sound. The reason I use this technique is because I’ve always wanted to do group singing. I think group singing is a powerful tool that an individual can never do. Usually, you have to be super talented to sing on stage, but together, you can sound stunning, powerful, and united. 

I kept noticing that the Arab women in my project, the way they drew, always linked themselves to something in nature, such as, I am a palm. I am a palm tree. My roots are deep and I’m always giving. I am the water. I work and I shift, things like that. And it appeared in the writings. I am the sand. I am the stone. And there is this connection. I thought, this was an interesting way to self-define, which I have lost because I’m traveling internationally, constantly presenting my work to European-American artist communities. But I’ve always responded to their understanding.

These women in my home really knew who they were. They were the stone, they were the sand, they were the palm. I thought I have to do this differently. I cannot approach them with group singing and a song. I put the sound in their ears and I told them, to hum with it. As the dune hums, you hum back to it. So they started to hum. Let’s open up our mouths. 

We gathered all their drawings because the idea was to put the drawings on the artwork, but not to read them. I started to read them and I’m like, oh, god, these are amazing. I cried with some of them. Who wrote this one? She raised her hand, and I said, you hold the microphone, you sing what you wrote, and everyone in the room is going to sing it back at you. We did that as an exercise over and over in three cities. It was really, really a beautiful, life-changing experience. I think you can find a lot of the pictures and singing in my Instagram. I haven’t posted anything yet on my website. I haven’t had the time.

“Creating safe spaces is part of the workshop energy that I try to create,”

Manal AlDowayan

WW: What an emotional experience for everyone involved.

MAD: Yes, it was. I can’t tell you what the impact has been like. And the messages I’ve been receiving while I was in Venice, little children sending me, thank you, Auntie Manal, for including my drawing. Women have been writing to me saying, I’m going to book myself a trip to Venice, I can’t wait to see it. It’s been very, very special.

WW: With the powerful concepts of visibility and invisibility in global media running through the workshops, what kinds of emotions, shifts, or revelations did you witness in your fellow countrywomen—as well as in yourself?

MAD: I think this is from reading the writings, that there were a lot of women that wrote down to me that this is the first time they’ve written a letter to themselves, or they address themselves. This is a unique moment for them in the sense that giving, encouraging, or speaking positively to yourself is very rare. We don’t do it. You should, but we don’t. To just look in the mirror and say, you’re amazing, you’re powerful, you can do it. 

The other thing is the realization of belonging to a larger tribe, which is a sisterhood of women, just sitting next to people. People have written me letters after the workshop saying, I kept looking at the woman on my right and on my left, and I’m like, who are they? But I love them. Their smiles bring joy to me. They really connected to each other as humans in that space without thinking about anything else except art. It’s incredible what art can do in a society, in a community, how it builds bridges of understanding. 

For me, the impact has been the validation of a journey that I’ve had with the Ministry of Culture and all the officials. I used to carry all my stuff and move from city to city. I would bring along a cousin or a friend to help me out as an assistant, but to have this different setting, this support, and they believe in my language. I understand that it is part of the narrative of our nation. This is a message I’m trying to, hopefully, convey, that an artist is part of writing the history of a people, a society. An artist also has something to add to this conversation. I think artworks really can become documents.

“They really connected to each other as humans in that space without thinking about anything else except art,”

Manal AlDowayan

WW: You stated that through this artwork you are asking the profound question, “What is the history that needs to be written through this work?”

MAD: Things came out of it that were very, very different from what I thought would come out of it. I think the journey is still long for this conversation. Self-definition is going to take time to understand who we are and to really sit down and write our own stories and narratives. Let’s focus on art, especially. In the art world, we are still waiting for Western critics to include us in their writings, and for museums to include us in their collections. This has caused a lot of confusion because you want to make art that is honest and truthful to your community and to your personal experience. But in the end, you want to make sure your artwork, or the art world wants you to make sure your artwork is palatable for that audience. Trying to work through these challenges as an artist, for me at this point, is a very interesting turning point. I have an audience that is my own community, that understands my language and does not have the European canon of art history in their brain. When they look at my work, they look at it with emotions and with truthful eyes.

WW: Throughout your participatory practice, what nuances have you observed in the crossover of the physical into the digital for the next generation of women in and from Saudi Arabia?

MAD: I think the only new thing that has evolved as a strong platform, from 2005 when I made my first artwork and today, is that social media is dominant. It’s a place where a lot of women around the world, men and women, have found a space for their voices to be heard directly. You don’t have somebody in between, a journalist or an author or someone who’s telling your story on your behalf. I think that has changed things. When I look at the statistics of my social media in gender, women are the majority of followers of my practice. It’s fascinating to me. I love that. I wonder, why? Why aren’t there equal men to women? Why aren’t they interested in this artwork? When I pose a question, it doesn’t mean I have an answer. 

A Sustainable Masterpiece Unfolds in Venice

WW: How were the artifacts developed in those workshops translated into an immersive installation of sculpture and sound in Venice?

MAD: I started off with a tiny foam maquette. They scanned it and turned it into a 3D model. And then I arranged it more how I felt it looked. Then we started to fabricate in Venice because it was more sustainable to do it there. I didn’t like the idea of shipping and using planes and things like that. I’d rather that it was made in Venice, and it just moves on a boat to the Arsenale. The fabric was sourced from India and handwoven in the northern part. It’s a two-star silk that’s very rough, not the typical silk that you would find. They don’t kill the worm when they’re taking the silk from the cocoons of the worms. They let it live its life and then they take the silk. Then we silk-screened everything onto it and installed it. It took us about three weeks to install it in space. I painted all the edges.

Questioning the Politics of Invisibility in Communities 

WW: How does this meaningful exhibition echo the purpose in your original artworks Esmi – My Name and Tree of Guardians, as well as launch a renewed call for solidarity?

MAD: It echoes past artworks because there are a lot of strings that you can pull out of my former works that are linked to this artwork in Venice. The conversation about power and the politics of invisibility is the question I have in my practice. I constantly look at invisible communities, invisible societies. Even in this work, you don’t really see a picture of any women. It’s a sculpture with writings and sound, but it all occupies you, especially the sounds of chanting. You can hear them. You can’t see them but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. This play on visibility and visibility is very important. I’ve pulled it through all my artwork throughout my career. 

Media and collective memory, this is also a huge concern of mine, and you see it repeated in many, many projects. I think I use the media as a tool, but collective memory and its manipulation through parables or stories. I noticed other pavilions that were by women in Arsenale, like Lebanon. She took on how women are portrayed in mythology. It’s another tool that’s being used. Uzbekistan had something very interesting. We had a conversation as artists. 

It’s crazy in Venice that you can meet up with these amazing artists and say, what did you make? I love it. Then celebrating with them at the end of the night. It was just such an interesting moment to see that so many women came with this message to Venice. It shows you that our struggle, our need for definition, is a theme across every country. Every woman experiences it. Othering is absolutely a fragmentation. I think it’s a patriarchal tool that tries to keep us apart from each other, and this serves no one. 

This idea of solidarity with no conditions is a very important one. In the end, this whole situation, any woman that lives through it…I think it is a system, a machine that has been constructed by humans and can be deconstructed by humans.