Issue #73 Being Manal AlDowayan

Manal AlDowayan is an artist of deep time and urgent presence. Born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1973, into the unique ecosystem of the Aramco compound, her upbringing unfolded in a space simultaneously hyper-modern and deeply traditional - a paradox that echoes throughout her practice. Trained first in information systems and later in contemporary art, she has long moved between disciplines, languages, and landscapes, weaving a practice that is as conceptual as it is grounded, as poetic as it is political.
From her early photographic series to her large-scale participatory installations, AlDowayan has consistently created spaces where the erasure of women’s voices, through bureaucracy, tradition, or silence, is neither aestheticised nor mourned, but actively resisted.
Whether in Suspended Together (2011), where 200 porcelain doves carry travel permission slips from Saudi women, or Tree of Guardians (2014), in which participants reconstruct matrilineal memory across generations, she has transformed the mechanisms of constraint into forms of collective remembrance.
Her importance as an artist lies not only in the subjects she brings to light – gender, memory, language, nationhood – but also in how she brings others into the process. AlDowayan is a convener, a listener, a collaborator. Her work unfolds as dialogue. It asks: Who gets to write history? Who names, who is named, and who is forgotten?
At a time when the cultural narratives of the Gulf are being rapidly written and rewritten, Manal AlDowayan offers a counter-gesture: slowness, return, stitching, silence that listens before it speaks.
This monograph gathers key works across decades, charting a practice that is always evolving, always rooted in the body, the archive, the unheard voice. She is one of the most vital artists of our time, and it is only the beginning.