Riyadh International Book Fair promises celebration of literature
Fair will host writers, thinkers, and intellectuals from Saudi Arabia and beyond, making it a pivotal literary platform in the region
Mohammed Hasan Alwan: The fair offers visitors a unique intellectual and cultural experience, incorporating the latest technologies and digital solutions
Updated 18 September 2024
Arab News
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia’s Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission is gearing up for the 2024 Riyadh International Book Fair, which is set to take place from Sept. 26 to Oct. 5 at King Saud University in Riyadh.
With about 2,000 local, Arab and international publishing houses and agencies from more than 30 countries adorning 800 booths, this year’s fair promises to be a celebration of literature, knowledge, and creativity.
The fair will host writers, thinkers, and intellectuals from Saudi Arabia and beyond, making it a pivotal literary platform in the region.
Qatar will be the guest of honor at the fair. The rich cultural and intellectual legacy of the country will be on display through a dedicated pavilion featuring rare manuscripts and publications from Qatar’s Ministry of Culture.
Leading literary and artistic luminaries, alongside key organizations from Qatar’s cultural landscape, will feature at the event.
Mohammed Hasan Alwan, the CEO of the commission, said that the fair illustrated the unwavering support for cultural endeavors in Saudi Arabia.
Alwan said: “The fair offers visitors a unique intellectual and cultural experience, incorporating the latest technologies and digital solutions. Attendees can discover thousands of new releases across various fields and enjoy a wide range of activities and events within the diverse cultural program, featuring prominent cultural figures from Saudi Arabia and beyond.
“This makes the 2024 edition a truly inspiring cultural journey, building on the successes of previous editions.”
This year’s fair boasts a dedicated business zone, with participation from literary agencies managing authors’ works and contracts, and with printing presses offering services to publishers. Additionally, there will be government and financial institution booths related to the publishing business sector.
The zone will host special sessions and workshops on topics such as entrepreneurship, licensing and copyright.
The fair will also feature a children’s area brimming with literary, cultural, and entertainment activities aimed at igniting the spark of curiosity in the young generation.
By championing local authors, providing a platform for self-published works, and offering a diverse range of cultural activities, the fair reflects the Kingdom’s efforts to nurture creativity and promote literary innovation.
The fair’s diverse cultural and intellectual activities are to be hosted in partnership with the Cultural Channel.
The program includes dialogue sessions, workshops, poetry evenings, and concerts and artistic performances designed to enrich the cultural sector, foster knowledge and promote reading as a way of life, while contributing to the sustainability of the cultural and intellectual renaissance underway in Saudi society.
RIYADH: Some of the Kingdom’s leading artists — including Ahmed Mater, Moath Alofi, and Rashed AlShashai — are opening their warehouse-sized doors during the inaugural Art Week Riyadh at JAX District, which runs until April 13.
It is always a treat to walk into active art studios as it is the most intimate way to immerse yourself in an artist’s world. You see half-baked ideas, abandoned projects, rough drafts, and final pieces, all in one space. For art lovers it offers a rare glimpse into the process and world-building of the artist.
Visitors were invited to sketch, daydream, or take a closer look at the materials on hand. (AN Photo/Huda Bashatah)
On the day of our visit interested onlookers from all walks of life wandered in, soaking in the sights, sounds, and textures all around. Some artists offered bottled water and places to sit. Visitors were invited to sketch, daydream, or take a closer look at the materials on hand. It was fun and engaging.
Many of the artists dropped into their studios as people trickled — or stormed — in, engaging with those eager to ask questions, share comments, or snap selfies.
Artists at JAX often wander into other studios between projects, collaborating or simply exchanging ideas. (AN Photo/Huda Bashatah)
Artists at JAX often wander into other studios between projects, collaborating or simply exchanging ideas. That organic interaction supports a thriving creative ecosystem and fosters much-needed artist-to-artist connection.
JAX is a walkable district, but golf cart buggies are also available to shuttle visitors between studios if they would rather ride and enjoy the warm breeze.
While some studios are adjacent and others are shared, this invitation from the Art Week Riyadh team — spearheaded by the Visual Arts Commission — offers a vibrant glimpse into the richness of the evolving Saudi art scene.
Morad Mostafa’s Red Sea-backed debut feature ‘Aisha Can’t Fly Away’ heads to Cannes
Updated 10 April 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: The Cannes Film Festival has revealed its official selection for 2025, with “Aisha Can’t Fly Away” by Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mostafa featured in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section.
Developed with the support of the Red Sea Film Foundation through its Red Sea Labs program, the film tells the story of Aisha, a 26-year-old Somali woman living in Ain-Shams — a Cairo neighborhood home to a large African migrant community.
As the authorities turn a blind eye to escalating violence and rising tensions between locals and migrants, control of the area falls into the hands of various gangs. When one gang offers Aisha protection in exchange for a personal favor, her life begins to unravel.
Mostafa shared the news on Instagram, saying: “Extremely proud to announce that my first feature film ‘Aisha Can’t Fly Away’ in the Official Selection of the 78th Festival de Cannes in the prestigious section Un Certain Regard.”
‘At The Edge’: Sharp curatorial vision shines in flagship show at first Art Week Riyadh
Updated 10 April 2025
Jasmine Bager
RIYADH: As the inaugural Art Week Riyadh unfolds across the city, it signals more than just a new entry on the cultural calendar — it marks a shift in how contemporary art is being framed, experienced, and contextualized in the Kingdom. Running until Apr. 13, the weeklong event resists the format of the conventional art fair, instead offering an expansive experience that speaks to Saudi Arabia’s evolving cultural identity.
The flagship exhibition of the event, “At The Edge,” brings together over 30 galleries from Saudi Arabia and beyond. Their curated presentations do not merely showcase work — they provoke dialogue, challenge assumptions, and reflect the complex, often contrasting, cultural currents that define both the local and global contemporary art landscapes.
Artist Joud Fahmy’s piece at the exhibition. (AN Photo/Huda Bashatah)
The full art exhibition, organized by the Visual Arts Commission, has been curated by Vittoria Matarrese, along with associate curators Basma Harasani and Victoria Gandit-Lelandais.
Upon entering the dedicated space at JAX district in Diriyah, one of the first major pieces you will encounter is “Le grand miroir du monde” (2017) by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia. Presented in collaboration with Galleria Continua, it marks Attia’s first time exhibiting the work in the Kingdom.
Attia, whose multidisciplinary practice spans installation, sculpture, photography and video, draws on his dual heritage to explore the lasting impact of colonialism. His work confronts historical and contemporary trauma by examining cultural identity, collective memory and the process of repair — both physical and symbolic.
Artist Mohammad Alfaraj with his work. (AN Photo/Huda Bashatah)
The site-specific installation features fragmented mirrors, layered atop each other, forming a grand, almost puddle-like surface of shards. It reflects the ceiling, the light — and even the viewer. Meant to be seen from a slightly elevated vantage point, the work occupies a large space, reminiscent of a shattered ice-skating rink, gliding — and guiding — visitors into the rest of the exhibition.
This leads into an organic labyrinth of treasures, each work nestled in a contained place yet arranged to be in dialogue with its neighbors. Artists, works, moods, materials and voices from across generations and more than 25 countries interact.
Joud Fahmy’s “Trapped Emotions: Nostalgia” (2025) — a tactile piece made of dyed wool and rope intertwined with metal — strikes a powerful emotional chord. Fahmy, a Saudi artist represented by Hunna Art, often explores gender, family and cultural identity through mixed media and audiovisual installations.
Work by artist Mohammad Alfaraj. (AN Photo/Huda Bashatah)
Another notable work is “Dream Coat” (2024) by Greek artist Nefeli Papadimouli, composed of cotton garments and a wooden structure. Based in Paris, Papadimouli blends sculpture, drawing, performance and participatory action. Often working with fabric and soft materials, her architectural, abstract forms echo the visual language of the late Etel Adnan. Her work reflects on how we move through and shape shared environments, investigating belonging, intimacy and collective memory.
Riyadh-based artist Maisa Sheldan, who also maintains a studio at JAX, presents a standout installation. A Saudi artist of Palestinian origin, Sheldan explores human issues and collective memory by reconstructing raw materials into symbolic forms that reflect the impact of time. Her work, represented by Hafez Gallery, blends authenticity with contrasts between the visible and the invisible. The seemingly feathered cocoon chair invites you to immerse yourself in the space and swing along. The army of animals, all made from organic materials, is a striking image and one of my favorite works on display. It is playful and tells a story.
Representing Al-Ahsa, Mohammad Alfaraj is exhibiting with Mennour Gallery. As always, the use of palms is central to his work. A son and grandson of date farmers, Alfaraj grew up in the world’s largest desert oasis. Though he studied applied mechanical engineering at university, he describes himself as “a poet of visuals.” His upbringing on a farm instilled in him a deep commitment to reuse all materials and to prioritize sustainability.
Joud Fahmy’s “Trapped Emotions: Nostalgia” (2025) — a tactile piece made of dyed wool and rope intertwined with metal — strikes a powerful emotional chord. (AN Photo/Huda Bashatah)
Nestled within a smaller area is “From Earth: Historic Diriyah Materials Lab,” presented by the Diriyah Gate Development Authority. A small but powerful space invites viewers to explore the raw materials that shaped Diriyah: mud, limestone, palm fronds, wool and pigments. These natural elements, drawn from the land, speak to centuries of resilience, adaptation and environmental knowledge. The exhibition forces one to separate the materials and highlights them, both in their pure state and their crafted forms: mud transformed into bricks, palm fronds woven into objects, plants used to create vibrant pigments. Far from being relics, these materials remain living resources that breathe life into the works that they are used for.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to be a part of an initiative that really is creating a platform that will give voice to practitioners from Saudi Arabia,” Dina Amin, CEO of VAC, told Arab News regarding the activations.
“Art Week Riyadh is creating a wonderful moment for the people of Saudi Arabia to really be able to engage in many ways through the exhibitions: through the different locations, through the talks, through the workshops, through the open studios,” she added.
Amin also shared a personal experience: “The other day, I was walking around and popping into the studios, and it’s just absolutely wonderful to see the variety of language that each of the artists uses in his or her own work.
“For us, Art Week Riyadh is really about creating a moment of gravitational pull where we can bring all of the different practitioners together. What we really are celebrating here is everybody’s voice. We want to share our creativity, our culture, our engagement with art with the world, but we also want to invite everyone to come and discover it.”
REVIEW: Kuwaiti Palestinian author looks at women and disability in a transformative, speculative memoir
Updated 10 April 2025
Sumaiyya Naseem
JEDDAH: Kuwaiti Palestinian writer Shahd Alshammari’s new speculative memoir “Confetti and Ashes” is a bold departure from her previous work “Head Above Water,” which was longlisted for the Barbellion Prize in 2022.
Alshammari’s layered meditation on the disabled body as both a site of loss as well as endurance is propelled forward by sharp observations and a quiet brilliance that had me turning pages well into the night.
Her first memoir, “Head Above Water,” offered an unflinching look at navigating multiple sclerosis as an Arab woman teaching literature in Kuwait. Her latest, however, ventures into a realm where memory and personal narrative intersect with poetry, imagination, and otherworldly presences.
The voices of ghosts and Zari, her qareen — the jinn-companion assigned to each person in Islamic belief — transform Alshammari’s personal narrative. It becomes a dialogue, a captivating dance between the seen and unseen worlds.
This inclusion shakes up the conventional memoir structure to broaden the scope beyond Western frameworks of storytelling. It also offers readers a visceral look at the ways living with disability and chronic illness can disrupt and reshape an individual’s perspective and worldview.
The dreamlike and omniscient voice of the qareen also mirrors the disorientation and internal struggles that come with living with chronic illness and disability.
Alshammari astutely draws parallels between the disabled body and the female body in the social and cultural context of Kuwait. In a world of able-bodied norms, she reflects on their intersecting experiences of marginalization, scrutiny, and resistance.
She rejects predictable storytelling, and not just in her writing, but also in life. Her body rebels, yet she defies societal stigmas — including concerns voiced from other women with MS.
She explores holistic wellness practices and eventually takes up squash, expanding her social circle and pushing her limits to build her mental and physical endurance.
In capturing her dual journeys of illness and wellness, the author invites readers to reflect on the disabled body not as a burden, but as a site of poetic possibility.
In “Confetti and Ashes,” Alshammari presents a profound reclamation of the self and cements herself as a vital voice in reimagining the female disabled experience.
Art Week Riyadh: 3 generations of Saudi abstract art on display
The Saudi Research and Media Group unveiled a compelling collection at the inaugural art festival
Updated 09 April 2025
Nada Alturki
RIYADH: The Saudi Research and Media Group unveiled a compelling collection at the inaugural Art Week Riyadh that traces the evolution of Saudi abstraction.
Titled “Abstract Horizons,” it highlights the pioneering contributions of artists like Mohammed Al-Saleem and Abdulhalim Radwi, whose work helped lay the groundwork for the Kingdom’s contemporary art movement.
Borrowing its name from Mohammed Al-Saleem’s seminal work, the collection takes a unique approach, emphasizing the shifting aesthetic and intellectual currents of the Kingdom through the abstract practices of three generations of Saudi artists. (AN Photo by Nada Alturki)
Borrowing its name from Al-Saleem’s seminal work, the collection takes a unique approach, emphasizing the shifting aesthetic and intellectual currents of the Kingdom through the abstract practices of three generations of Saudi artists.
The exhibition seamlessly flows from the early beginnings with artists born in the 1930s and 1940s, whose work predominantly emerged in the 1990s: Radwi was a foundational figure in Saudi modernism; Al-Saleem, who became notable for establishing the “horizonism” movement, characterized his work with a geometric depiction of the Saudi skyline and desertscape; Taha Al-Seban furthered the desert motif with his unique color compositions.
From there, it can be seen how abstraction has transformed into a crucial language in the cultural scene.
The exhibition seamlessly flows from the early beginnings with artists born in the 1930s and 1940s, whose work predominantly emerged in the 1990s. (AN Photo by Nada Alturki)
The exhibition continues to work from the early 2000s, engaging more with culture, identity and memory. There are artists like Abdulrahman Al-Soliman, also a critic, who infused architectural elements to bridge between heritage and contemporary expression; Abdullah Hamas, who reimagines the Saudi landscape through geometric compositions; Fahad Al-Hajailan, whose abstraction plays with color and movement; Raeda Ashour, one of the first female Saudi abstract artists, who adopts a minimalist yet evocative approach with a chromatic palette and fluid silhouettes.
Then, at the turn of the 21st century, there is the work of artists born in the 1970s. Abstraction is now a conceptual tool.
Rashed Al-Shashai, known for his experimental approach, repurposes everyday materials to construct layered compositions that address the tension between tradition and modernity while, in contrast, Zaman Jassim’s abstraction interplays between the tangible and the elusive.
SRMG’s collection is on display as part of an exhibition titled “Collections in Dialogue,” featuring collected works by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) and Hayy Jameel.
