Art in Saudi Arabia
The picture is changing
Saudi artists and comedians are enjoying a thin breath of freedom
SAUDI ARABIA’s response to the Arab spring might be described as allergic. The tiniest whiff of protest last March prompted the government to outlaw demonstrations.
Even as women, in effect, continue to be banned from driving, and dissidents jailed or banned from travelling, a new media law has clamped tighter restrictions on the press. Echoing events in tiny Bahrain, where the ruling family crushed Shia protests, Saudi security forces have responded to rising unrest in their country’s east, among the kingdom’s own 10% Shia minority, with blunt measures, including live gunfire that killed five protesters in recent months.
Instead, the immediate beneficiaries of the Arab spring in Saudi Arabia may be a new generation of comedians and artists. They certainly stole the limelight on 19th January, at the opening of “We Need to Talk”, organised in Jeddah, a Red Sea port city. Set in a bare-walled, unfinished shopping mall by Edge of Arabia, an independent arts initiative, the festival was billed as the most significant exhibition of contemporary art ever staged in the kingdom.
Abdulnasser Gharem, an army officer who is also one of the leading lights in Saudi contemporary art, describes the growing movement as an evolution. It is often assumed the divisions in Saudi Arabia are religious or political, he says, but they are really between young and old. “After the Arab spring I think the older generation in Saudi has realised this. Now they want to hear the younger generation.”
