Huge silk petal-like structures marked with ink and acrylic paint almost envelop visitors entering Saudi Arabia’s pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The soft sculptures are part of Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan’s Biennale presentation, Shifting Sands: A Battle Song. In a video interview with STIR, she discusses her work for the Biennale and her longstanding community-driven practice.

AlDowayan seeks to offer a complex and nuanced perspective on Saudi women, moving away from mainstream media portrayals that consider them suppressed, in a treatment she calls “lazy journalism”. In the pavilion, women’s voices play on speakers lining the periphery of the room, in response to these media portrayals. The sculptural petals carry multiple layers of newsprint, which blend into each other to the point of illegibility.  Shifting Sands challenges normative portrayals of Saudi women, allowing them to take control of their narrative.

AlDowayan is cognisant of the responsibilities and challenges that come with creating a participatory exhibition of this scale given her perspective as a female artist from Saudi Arabia.

The silk petals in Shifting Sands are created to resemble ‘desert rose’ crystals, a mineral formation commonly found in the desert sand of Dhahran, AlDowayan’s hometown. Like the desert rose, the installation is layered, with the petals arrayed in a formation that leads visitors into the centre of the work. Here, instead of layered newsprint, the central petals hold silkscreen printed drawings and texts by the women whose voices we hear around the room— all participants in a series of workshops held by AlDowayan throughout Saudi Arabia. The work’s layout mimics the traditional dance ceremonies of Saudi Arabian warriors—with lines of soldiers and dancers, and a poet at its heart. In gesturing to these ceremonies, AlDowayan also highlights the invisible heritage of women in Saudi Arabia—because the dances and songs they create and participate in are performed in private, they are not recorded and therefore excluded from historic and contemporary accounts of culture.

AlDowayan is cognisant of the responsibilities and challenges that come with creating a participatory exhibition of this scale given her perspective as a female artist from Saudi Arabia. She briefed workshop participants on the Biennale, the intent behind the artwork and how their responses would be used. Her installation is intended as a “performative act of solidarity”, she notes, humanising the women behind the headlines.

AlDowayan’s next project, Oasis of Stories, for Wadi AlFann desert park in the historic city of AlUla in Saudi Arabia takes on land art while retaining Shifting Sands’ participatory aspect. Like her installation for the Biennale, this permanent work seeks to highlight underrepresented local histories and heritage while showcasing the character of the community it will belong to.

Watch the full interview by clicking on the cover video.

(Video script by Harshali Pagare and body text by STIR intern Srishti Ojha)

The mandate of the 60th Venice Biennale, which aims to highlight under-represented artists and art histories, aligns with the STIR philosophy of challenging the status quo and presenting powerful perspectives. Explore our series on the Biennale, STIRring 'Everywhere' in Venice, which brings you a curated selection of the burgeoning creative activity in the historic city of Venice, in a range of textual and audiovisual formats.