Shifting sands

Saudi Arabia has undergone accelerated social change and is set to become a global art powerhouse, with contemporary artists playing a crucial role, discovers Jessica Lack

- Jessica Lack

THIS year at the Venice Biennale, the artist representing Saudi Arabia, Manal Al Dowayan, was asked by a journalist if she could show her art back home. ‘I explained it was commissioned by the Saudi Ministry of Culture. Of course I can show it!’ was the response. Her exasperation is not uncommon among Saudi artists. Over the past 20 years, the accelerated social change in the Arab kingdom has been so rapid that it is perhaps understandable that Western journalists are struggling to keep up.

Forty years ago, it would have been unusual to see any art in the Gulf country. Culture was strictly censored, limited to a few Modernist sculptures along a sand-blown corniche in the city of Jeddah and exhibitions endorsed by the religious ‘morality’ police. Many artists chose to live abroad rather than grapple with the Kafkaesque restrictions imposed on their practice. Today, the troublesome Mutawa are no more and the kingdom is set to become a global art powerhouse, with new museums, biennales, art fairs and sculpture parks in the planning.

Fuelling this drive is Vision 2030, a cultural and economic strategy conceived by the prime minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, often referred to as MBS. Among his key objectives is a desire to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and gas to one of tourism and creativity. MBS hopes that by 2030, 3% of the country’s total GDP will be generated by culture and, to this end, has invested some £48 billion in the Arts.