Fahda bint Saud Al Saud

Biography

In 2008, at the Interfaith Centre of Melbourne, an exhibition ran from 25 January to 23 March on stereotypes of women in the Islamic world. Among the works was Fahda bint Saud's watercolour “Three Women”, built on the traditional Japanese composition of the three monkeys (“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”).

Fahda was born on 15 January 1953 in Riyadh. Her father was King Saud; her mother, Jamila bint Assad bin Ibrahim Al Mirhi, came from Latakia in Syria. She received her first schooling at Karimat High School in Riyadh, where she studied until 1964. In 1969 she graduated from the Beirut Evangelical School for Girls. In 1974 she took a bachelor's degree in political science at Beirut College for Women (now the Lebanese American University), and in 1976 a master's degree in political science at the American University of Beirut. She then spent a year at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, not on a degree programme but on separate courses in the political science department.

She came to art after political science. After moving to Paris, she studied under the Iraqi artist Issam Al Said, who specialised in Islamic geometric patterns. Her main medium is watercolour.

The exhibitions in which her work was shown had a feminist focus. The Melbourne show was the first in a series organised by the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Jordan and the Pan-Mediterranean Women Artists Network of Greece. She herself organised exhibitions, most often connected with the memory of her father, and supported other artists in Saudi Arabia: for example, the shows of Farha Sayeed, an Indian artist who decorates eggs. She made the illustrations for a book about her father published by the King Saud foundation. The publication was seen as part of the rehabilitation of King Saud. She founded the King Saud Library and runs it: the library collects, archives and publishes material on the king's history and legacy. For more than twenty years Fahda has chaired the Al Faisaliyya Women's Welfare Society in Jeddah. She also heads Sleysla, a cooperative society in Jeddah that modernises Saudi crafts and fashion, works with local materials and traditional designs, and employs local women.

She wrote articles on social issues and Saudi history for the newspapers Okaz and Arab News. In February 2007 her article “Saudi Women's Concerns” appeared in Al Hayat: she called the debate on women's rights decisive for the nation's renaissance. An interview with her was included in Mona Almunajjed's book “Saudi Women Speak”, published in 2011 in Amman and Beirut.