art.wikisort.org - Artist

Shadia Alem or Shādiyah 'Ālim or in Arabic: شادية عالم (born in Mecca) is a Saudi Arabian visual artist.

Shadia Alem
Born	1960 Mecca
Nationality	Saudi Arabian
Alma mater	King AbdulAziz University
Notable work	The Black Arch - Venice Biennale
Website	https://www.shadiaalem.com/

Early life

Alem was born in Makkah.[1] Her childhood was spent in Taif, where she reportedly painted on doors from a young age.[2] Her father was a calligrapher and her mother embroidered.[3]

Education

Alem graduated with a BA in Art and English Literature from King Abdulaziz University. [4]

Career

Since 1985 Alem's work has been exhibited nationally in Saudi Arabia and internationally.[1] Some works are a commentary of the lives of women in Saudi Arabia, using form to demonstrate the anxiety that women may live under.[5]

Alem's work, Youm al-Suq, was selected by British Airways to appear on the livery of its aircraft in 1998.[6][7] Her 2007 retrospective exhibition at Albareh Gallery demonstrated the development of her work from portraiture, to landscape, to photography.[8] She has also exhibited at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn,[9] at Amum in Tennessee,[10] in Istanbul as part of its 2010 Capital of Culture programme,[11] and at the 6th Berlin Biennale.[12]

Venice Biennale

In 2011, Saudi Arabia entered the Venice Biennale for the first time with Alem as the country's representative.[13][14][15] Her work, entitled The Black Arch, which draws on folklore, Islam and medieval travel narratives.[16] The work was made of up of a dark cube suspended on its point over a sea of iridescent spheres.[17] Visitors were encouraged to move around the work and the sphere represented travellers of all kinds.[18] It covered an area of 350 square metres; its scale as an installation has been interpreted as a challenge to spatial order.[19] The colour black was also key to the installation: as the colour of Ka'aba cloth, the colour of the silhouettes of veiled women and of the black stone.[3]

In the same year, Alem was one of the artists chosen to feature in the British Museum's exhibition Hajj.[20][21] However, 2011 was not just a year of achievement - it is also the year their mother died, 15 years worth of work was lost in a flood in Jeddah and computer failure lost five further projects.[3]

She lives and works between Paris and Jeddah.[22]

Women and art in Saudi Arabia

In 2011, Shadia Alem and her sister, writer, were featured in Vogue Italia, discussing their work and the role of women in Saudi Arabia.[23] While Alem tackles gender issues through her work, her sister sees her writing as genderless.[24] In Alem's work Negative No More, the pre-and-misconceptions of Saudi women are commented on.[25] This installation consisted of 5000 photographic negatives, none of which feature women, to draw attention to the fact that women have been absent from Saudi Arabian political history.[26]

References

На других языках

---

[de] Shadia Alem

Shadia 'Alem, auch transkribiert als Shādiyah 'Ālim (arabisch شادية عالم, DMG Šādiya ʿĀlim; * 1960 in Mekka, Hedschas, Saudi-Arabien) ist eine saudi-arabische Malerin und Künstlerin.

---

- [en] Shadia Alem

---

[fr] Shadia Alem

Shadia Alem ou Shādiyah 'Ālim (en arabe : شادية عالم), née à La Mecque en Arabie saoudite, est une artiste visuelle, peintre et photographe saoudienne.

---

---