It took 58 years for a pioneering Jeddah schoolhouse show to reach Frieze Masters in London. In 1968, two female artists hung their paintings at a school in Jeddah called Dar Al-Tarbia Al-Hadetha, in one of the first exhibitions women had ever held in Saudi Arabia. One of them, Mounirah Mosly, spent the decades that followed — long before Vision 2030 set off a boom in Saudi art — designing Aramco publications, helping run its children’s art competitions, and working dyes, snakeskin, and rope into collages about war and Palestine, until her death in 2019.
This week, her creations go on display at Frieze Masters, Frieze London’s fair for art made before 2000, where a slot reads as a verdict that the work now belongs to history. Jeddah’s Athr Gallery is debuting with Mosly and a second pioneer of Saudi modernism, Abdulrahman Alsulaiman. Her work hangs in the fair’s Feminist Legacies section.
— Manal Albarakati