In the Studio: Manal AlDowayan
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Internationally renowned Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan is midway through an ambitious public installation that will be shown in the Valley of Arts, in the desert of north-west Saudi Arabia. She has just returned from collecting stories and drawings from the inhabitants of AlUla, and is starting to transform them into her own artwork. Titled Oasis of Stories, the project pays tribute to the local people of AlUla. She will carve their drawings into her installation, just like their ancestors carved petroglyphs to tell their own stories thousands of years ago. She also talks about her early work challenging the restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia, such as I Am, which questioned the way women were only allowed to perform certain roles in Saudi society.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Global Story, with Smart Takes and Fresh Perspective, on one big news story, |
| 0:07.8 | every Monday to Friday from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.3 | Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, to find out more. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome to In the Studio from the BBC World Service, the program that investigates the creative process. |
| 0:28.0 | When you're making an artwork that is very complex, I really give it a lot of time and so what I do is I just absorb and read and it just sits in my brain and in my body and you know sometimes tears come. |
| 0:42.0 | And this time we're focusing on an artist who started out 20 years ago |
| 0:46.8 | challenging the role of women in the Arab society she grew up in, questioning |
| 0:51.5 | how history had been recorded and imagining a more inclusive future. |
| 0:55.7 | There was just a few that were doing this. |
| 0:58.9 | There was really very, very blurry past to look at. There was no archive, there was no like standing |
| 1:06.0 | artists and exhibitions I can go to and like oh here's an elder artist, I can |
| 1:09.1 | have asked them questions. Manal A Doygan is now one of the most internationally known artists from Saudi Arabia. |
| 1:16.8 | You have public commissions, museums being built and they need to acquire works. |
| 1:22.1 | You have land art, you have design, people want you to get involved in hotels. |
| 1:27.0 | It's just crazy right now. |
| 1:30.0 | Showing work at the Guggenheim in New York, the British Museum, and the Lachma in LA. |
| 1:34.8 | Soon she'll be representing her country at the Venice Bienale. |
| 1:38.0 | And I'm delighted to be given exclusive access to Manal, |
| 1:41.2 | as she continues her work on a huge multi-year project. |
| 1:44.0 | They came to me and said dream, dream with no limitations. |
| 1:47.0 | So I just made up an artwork. |
| 1:49.0 | A few years later they came back to me and said well, we like it, we want to make it. |
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