Reviving the Overlooked Histories of Arab Women Artists

The underrepresentation of female artists, especially in earlier decades, is hardly news. Yet each exhibition that strives to shed light on women’s artistic careers and rebalance the scales uncovers stories that fascinate. At Dhahran’s King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), the group show ‘Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World (1960s–1980s)’ delves into the rich output of 50 female artists across the MENA region.  

Created in collaboration with the UAE-based Barjeel Art Foundation and curated by Rémi Homs, the exhibition presents more than 70 artworks that often straddle the fine line between art and handcraft, a tension that defined many female practices in the 20th century. Several pieces have never before been publicly exhibited, including Mounirah Mosly’s The Young Woman (2010), where printed textile fragments are embedded into a painting of a woman in traditional garb carrying a breadbasket. The work transforms Saudi material culture into a palimpsest of local reference and memory.

While the show presents some well-known names – such as Egyptian artist and activist Inji Efflatoun, whose canvases captured vivid scenes of resistance and liberation, or pioneering Lebanese sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair – its strength lies in the rediscovery of lesser-known figures. Khadiga Riad, for example, was the first Egyptian woman to exhibit abstract artwork, in 1959, though she remains largely overlooked. Her Abstraction (1941), rendered in wisps of burnt orange and green oil on Celotex, unfolds as a surrealist dreamscape that quietly asserts her place in art history.

Alongside the exhibition’s six thematic sections – ranging from new media experimentation to the reclamation of local craft practices, to self-taught artists denied formal education – four additional ‘In Focus’ areas engage with specific, boundary-pushing artists and institutions. Among them is Saudi artist Mona Al-Munajjed, better known as a writer, whose recently revealed visual practice employs batik – a medium uncommon in her region – and gutta silk painting to craft intricate, jewel-toned cityscapes. Her Minaret of the Mosque (1984) depicts lost monuments from old Jeddah – its towering minarets and mashrabiya-shaded houses – preserving architectural heritage through fabric. Al-Munajjed’s late unveiling as an artist lends the works an added sense of mystery and reinvention. 

The 1960s to ’80s were a time of social and political transformation across the Arab world. Many countries shed their colonial cages, and rapid change followed national independences and attempts at cultural reclamation. Heritage crafts – copper work, glassmaking, ceramics and tapestry – once functional, were now repurposed as vessels for experimentation and expression. Female artists who might previously have been dismissed as domestic crafters were now recognized for work that prioritized visual storytelling over utility. 

In this sense, the exhibition’s two sections on reclaiming craft heritage and new media experimentation act as twin reflections, with the artists approaching similar pathways of creation from two opposing backgrounds. Palestinian artist Vera Tamari’s Palestinian Women at Work (1979) captures the rhythm of a pottery studio in a colourful ceramic relief, celebrating collective creation and labour. By contrast, Emirati artist Najat Makki’s Window (1987) juxtaposes henna pigment against blue gouache, bridging traditional material with abstraction. Elsewhere, Algeria’s Aïcha Haddad, responding to canvas shortages, turned to plaster on panel, yielding pastel-toned cityscapes like Cité du M’zab (1984), where figurative symbols and cubist echoes intertwine.

‘Horizon in Their Hands’ offers a thorough look at the female creators whose practices reshaped the canons of 20th-century Arab art, often circumventing social or political constraints to push boundaries and transmute craft into art. Rather than focusing on the well-known giants of the past, the exhibition foregrounds marginal artists, offering works that feel both poignant and revelatory and laying the ground for crucial future research planned by the institution. 

‘Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World (1960s–1980s)’ is on view at Ithra Museum, Dhahran, until 30 November

_{Main image: Nadia Mohamed, Palms and Fields, 2021, tapestry, 150 × 110 cm. Courtesy: Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, Sharjah}