“My art focusses on the power of women – to remind myself I have power.” I heard this sentence in an interview with Hend al-Mansour, a Saudi-Arabian artist working with screen printing and installation, who emigrated to the US in 1997 at age 41. The oldest of 12 siblings, born in the small town of Al-Hasa in Saudi-Arabia, she seems quite powerful to me. She went to medical school in Egypt, practiced cardiology for decades, engaged in her art that was quite controversial in her Islamic environment, and took the harsh step of leaving for work at the Mayo Clinic. Upon arrival she was diagnosed with cancer, and treated throughout her 2 years of internship, working all the while.

The forced recognition of how short life might be led to a decision to engage fully in the arts – promptly working towards a an MFA from MCAD in 2002 and an MA in Art History at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul in 2013. Al-Mansour received a Jerome Fellowship of Printmaking in 2013/14 and the Juror’s Award of the Contemporary Islamic Art exhibition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2012. This year she received a McKnight fellowship and has a solo show at the Arab American National Museum in Michigan.

http://www.arabamericanmuseum.org/About-the-Museum.id.3.htm

Her Mihrab project combines her passions: a focus on women, on (in)equality in the Islamic world, on introducing Western viewers to modern Arab art which is often figural in contrast to the traditional calligraphy of Islamic art.

She installs portraits of several women in prayer niches in the style of traditional mosques called Mihrab (usually unavailable to women,) made out of paper and assorted ephemeral materials. Prayer rugs display some relevant symbols for each woman and they hold, in their portraits, objects of value to them that squarely place them either in the places they lost and long for, or the places where they have arrived.

https://www.hendalmansour.com/mihrab-project.html

Another exhibition I wish I could see for myself instead of reading about. What I did see can be found in the photographs from this weekend’s Arab Festival in PDX. Lots of strong and successful women in the picture, including some of the lawyers who organize this annual event. Vibrant colors, too, just like in al-Mansours art.