Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art in Diriyah is currently hosting “Cities Under Quarantine: The Mailbox Project” exhibition to highlight the profound global isolation that reshaped life in spring 2020, according to the Saudi Press Agency.
Organized by the Museums Commission, the exhibition showcases intimate testimonies that combine art, writing, and personal reflections, depicting that exceptional moment that unsettled the world and introduced a new definition to human connection.
Set to run until Sept. 28, the show presents artists’ books created by Arab artists during the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting the aspects of life during this global isolation.
The event is based on an initiative launched by Abed Al-Kadiri, who distributed 57 handmade books to Arab artists all over the world. He invited them to respond creatively to the reality of lockdown.
Interestingly, these responses turned into deeply personal works and transformed solitude into a space for reflection by reimagining places, desires, and silences.
This reality perfectly aligns with the goal of the exhibition; to explore life in suspension during the pandemic, where confinement redefined human bonds and became a space for reflection and self-discovery.
Saudi Arabia represents the exhibition’s third stop, following Villa Romana in Florence and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha.
On Saturday, the exhibition hosted two discussions: “The Visual Traces of the Self: Between the Hands and the Eyes” and “Printmaking and the Artist’s Book.”
Moreover, the museum’s atrium will hold a live performance titled “Today, I Would Like to Be,” on Sept. 6, urging the public to take part in creating an artist’s book.
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