Image & Movement

Shubbak brings together a specially curated selection of works by female Saudi artists, whose practices  are at the intersection of movement, live performance and choreography. Against a backdrop of a lack of spaces dedicated to contemporary performance, the featured  artists integrate movement in varied ways. Either trained in choreography, collaborating with choreographers or other artists, or self-staging, each artist has a distinct and personal approach to the way they use the human body as an expressive tool in their work. Their diverse practices range from quirky renditions of traditional culture, epic cinematic storytelling, choreography inspired by landscapes to Instagram-disseminated performances. 

Image & Movement includes works by Marwah AlMugait, Sarah Brahim, Ahaad Alamoudi and Balqis Al Rashed.

Those who don’t know falcons grill them, 2018

Ahaad Alamoudi

In Those who don’t know falcons grill them, a cohort of young male dancers perform the Khabayti, a traditional dance from Saudi Arabia’s West Coast. The choreographed pageantry of swirling, sword-wielding men and boys was once used in preparation for war, and is now typically performed at social gatherings by male dancers. However, at segregated events, female dancers are able to perform the Khabayti for women-only audiences.

Donning custom-made garments patterned with falcons — the national bird of Saudi Arabia, which represents courage, power, and national identity — Alamoudi’s dancers are propelled by the hypnotically mastered sounds of the mizmar, a wind instrument common in traditional Arabic music. Appropriating the format of a music video, Alamoudi remixes references to traditional Arab culture and, as a female director, subverts the male gaze typical of the genre by using only male performers.

Courtesy the artist and Athr Gallery.

I Lived Once, 2020

Marwah AlMugait

This video places the viewer amid a powerful group performance that translates processes from nature, including the reactive, unconscious defence mechanisms of organisms in danger. The artist has devised a physical language of cyclical and synchronized gestures with choreographer Lamees AlSaddique and Jawaher AlRefaei, drawing on diverse actions such as the ‘shimmering’ of honeybees and the Mimosa Pudica’s signature ‘touch me not’ folding movement. The abstract, fictional narrative considers modes of co-existence connected to and modelled on nature.

By observing and enacting these gestures, the film hints at alternative structures, shapes, and patterns, outside the often hierarchical order of human society. By considering the balance and harmony inherent in nature, the ego fades into the collective. The absorbing and meditative motion quiets the tension and anxiety of individual human reason to suggest the power of the group.

Devised via collaboration and mimicry, the work is a process of translation and exchange between the artist, the choreographer, and nature, as well as with group learning between the director, coach, artist, and dancers.

Courtesy the artist. Commissioned by the Saudi Art Council. 

The Dance of the Olive Tree in the Wind, 2019

Sarah Brahim 

The Dance of the Olive Tree in the Wind is a collaboration between Sarah Brahim and Mohammad Alfaraj. It reflects their experience in improvisation inspired by the fields of olive trees and the neglected brick factories around the village of El Bruc in Barcelona, in a state where the body dances like a tree to the rhythm of scrap, bricks and dissolving rusted metal.

Courtesy the artist.

A State of Play

Balqis Al Rashed

A State of Play is an ongoing meta-performance-based video series that challenges the gaze through preconceived notions of womanhood, identity, and public exposure. The artwork combines the hoop, which is essentially a child's toy, with what appears to be a veiled woman, which at the time was the most recognised cultural signifier of womanhood in Saudi Arabia. The artwork foreshadowed the shift in attitude towards entertainment in Saudi Arabia that we are witnessing today.

In 2016, Instagram featured a video from the series A State of Play, contributing to its global appeal, generating over 5 million views on Instagram alone and Al Rashed was the first Saudi artist to be featured on Instagram’s official account. The response to the viral video series positioned it at the  threshold of praise and criticism. The ambiguity of the niqab/veil transformed the work into a viral meme that was copied, reproduced, manipulated, degraded, diluted, misrepresented, and completely taken out of context. The absence of absolute control on the internet further led to the  deterioration of the representation and the authority of the artwork.

Courtesy the artist.