NABILA AL BASSAM (B. 1942), BASKET MARKET

BASKET MARKET

signed Nabila Al Bassam in English and Arabic (lower right); titled Basket Market in English (lower centre); dated August 1994 in English (lower left)

lithograph printed in colours

73.5 by 53 cm. 29 by 21 in.

Framed: 91 by 68.5 cm. 35 ¾ by 27 in.

Executed in 1994, this work is an Artist’s proof.

Nabila Al Bassam was born in India in 1942, where she was educated in Mumbai before moving to Lebanon to pursue her studies at the American University of Beirut. Upon receiving her master’s in Education in 1968, Al Bassam then relocated to the US where she gained new insights into working with paper, textiles, silkscreen printing and ceramics. Upon returning to Saudi Arabia in 1979, Al Bassam opened the Arab Heritage Gallery, one of the earliest gallery spaces in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom. In that same year, Al Bassam also significantly travelled across the Kingdom to research the production of traditional textiles, for which she interviewed many craftswomen, and collected a range of materials including silver beads, traditional dress cloths and old fabrics; both the knowledge of the craftswomen and these materials have been incorporated into her multidisciplinary oeuvre.

While many of Al Bassam’s works act as an homage to the mountainous landscapes of the Kingdom, the present work presents a similar preoccupation of the artist: local craftspeople and their creations. Here, Al Bassam’s subject is the basket market, where local craftspeople have assembled surrounded by their various woven creations, all in expressionistic colouring much like Al Yahya and Siyam’s palettes.

Created during a decade of prolific output for Al Bassam, other works from this period were shown at the Diriyah Biennale earlier this year: as the biennial’s co-curator claims “[Al Bassam] realised that she wanted to create a space dedicated to art. She was very interested in preserving the crafts and knowledge behind textile making” (Rawaa Talass, Trailblazers: Nabila Al-Bassam – groundbreaking Saudi artist and gallery owner, Arab News, 29 February 2024, online).