Saudi Arabia

Manal AlDowayan’s installation, Shifting Sands: A Battle Song, is inspired by the evolving role of women in Saudi Arabia’s public sphere and their ongoing journey to assert their place and to reshape the narratives that have historically defined them.
In Shifting Sands: A Battle Song, visitors are invited to wind their way through a maze of large-scale, printed silk, petal- like sculptural elements that take their forms from the “desert rose”, a crystal commonly found in Saudi Arabia’s desert sands. The surface of these sculptures is silkscreened with texts written about Saudi women, a cacophony of media opinions, that have had a profound impact on their perception and obscured their own self-representation.
Yet, at the centre of the work, a shift occurs. Here, Saudi women boldly proclaim themselves. Through a series of participatory workshops, Manal AlDowayan has offered Saudi women and girls a platform to assert their own voices, setting forth a rallying cry of courage and solidarity.
In AlDowayan’s words: “I hope this artwork will encourage women to look within themselves and to lean on their community of women, to find their voice and their space within this new chapter in history, much of which is still unwritten”.