and decorated his sprawling one-storey
villa located in a neighbourhood in the east of Riyadh. Inside, he did the same for its furnishings, window frames and intricate doors, too. The
site was recently
.
Al Ruzaiza salvaged window frames from the Najd region and hung them next to his own paintings, which also show architectural Najdi motifs. The result shifts the presentation of his paintings, integrating them back into everyday life
. Ali Al Ruzaiza’s studio, at the back of his house, showing works in progress. Al Ruzaiza was one of the first abstract artists in the Kingdom. Myrna Ayad
Al Ruzaiza was born in
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Two rare Mahmoud Mokhtar works are being sold at Sotheby’s this month, bookending the Egyptian modernist’s life.
The first bronze,
Arous El Nil (or Bride of the Nile), shows a woman with a Pharaonic headdress and scarab necklace looking to the side. It was made in the 1920s or 1930s and is the bust for the full-length sculpture that is in the collection of Paris’s Jeu de Paume. The work has the
art
deco stylisation that the artist is now famous for, as well as his dexterity with Egyptian symbolism. Like many intellectuals of the period, Mokhtar returned to motifs, styles and subjects from Egypt’s Pharaonic past
This month marks a
year since the coronavirus pandemic initiated a series of global shutdowns across art organisations. The immediate effect of the pandemic was a swift shift to digital programming: exhibitions became walk-throughs; fair booths became
virtual viewing rooms; and Q&As became video chats. The amount of material made available online, as well as its uptake among the public, was overwhelming, fuelled perhaps by adrenalin and sublimated panic.
“The digital sphere has always had this sort of secondary position, and people didn’t take it as seriously as they should
- Krist Gruijthuijsen
That flurry of initial activity has subsided, but the “new normal” is still emerging. What have been the effects of a year’s worth of online programming on art organisations, artists and audiences – and specifically for the Arab world?
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Damien Hirst has always put the intertwined relationship between art and finance at the centre of his practice.
During the Young British Artists years, he set up a restaurant, Pharmacy in London, cashing in on his reputation. He publicly turned his studio into a company, Science (UK) Ltd. He showed a diamond-encrusted skull,
For the Love of God (2007) with a fixed price, contrasting the material worth of the object (£14 million, or $20 million) with the amount he was selling it for (£50 million, or $70 million).
So it stands to reason that Hirst would be among the first major artists to get on the cyber-currency trend that the art world is currently wrapping its collective head around.
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It’s funny to be reviewing a book about artists and motherhood when you are homeschooling: kind of like seeing an Instagram post of a party you are already at. “Gosh, that looks like a fun place to be,” you think. “Better than this vortex.”
Why Call It Labor? On Motherhood and Art Work, published by the Arab funding organisation Mophradat and edited by its director, Mai Abu ElDahab, presents motherhood as vastly more complicated than a “fun place to be”. Contributions by artists and curators such as Mary Jirmanus Saba, Basma Alsharif, Lara Khaldi, Nikki Columbus and Mirene Arsanios sketch out the structural problems facing mothers in the cultural arena. The labour in the book’s title is a handy double