SHADIA ALEM (B. 1960) AND RAJA ALEM (B. 1970) , JINNIYAT LAR

signed Shadia Alem in Arabic and dated and numbered 2000, 98/180 in English (on each, lower edge)

15 Rives vellum folios, 12 with hand-touched silkscreen prints by Shadia Alem and printed text by Raja Alem, encased in a canvas book cover and sleeve; 5 illustrated booklets:  Shadia Alem and Raja Alem (ed.), djinniyat lar/jinniyat lar (Paris and Jeddah: Al Mansouria Foundation, 2000)

Each folio (folded): 42 by 30 cm. 16 ½ by 11 ¾ in.

Book sleeve: 43.5 by 31 cm. 17 by 12 ½ in.

Executed in 2000; this work is number 98 from an edition of 180.

Shadia Alem was born in Mecca in 1960. She received her BA in Art & English Literature from the King AbdulAziz University. Starting initially as a painter, Shadia’s works gradually grew in volume to naturally progress into installation pieces. She now holds an ongoing multidisciplinary practice that incorporates painting, photography and installation. She work focuses on documenting different political and cultural phenomena such as through her works ‘All is Changed 9/11,’ in which she aimed to capture the reverberations of 9/11 on the Saudi population, and ‘Negatives, No More,’ where she considered accidental subjections to media by exposing blankets of film rolls. Shadia was selected to represent Saudi Arabia at the 54th Venice Biennale with her installation ‘The Black Arch,’ marking the Kingdom’s inaugural participation in the event, which was curated by Mona Khazindar and Robin Start. She has resided in Paris since 2006, which has allowed for her to engage in cultural exchanges between her immediate environment and her home country.

Novelist Raja Alem was born in Mecca in 1970 and received her BA in English Literature. Raja has since published numerous notable novels in multiple languages, and in 2005 was awarded the Arabic Women’s Creative Writing Prize on occasion of the 60^th anniversary of UNESCO’s founding. Raja has collaborated with many artists, making her one of the most recognised writers in the Arab world. Working with sister Shadia to unite art and poetry in the present work and beyond, the duo seeks to encourage creativity among women in the Kingdom. With a series of short stories by Raja to accompany Shadia’s artworks, the pair imaginatively weave tales of fantasy, harking to the Middle East’s longstanding tradition of storytelling. This work was commissioned by Al Mansouria Foundation and first presented at the Europ’Art Exhibition in Geneva in its year of creation.