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Ola Hejazi
Ola Hejazi lives in Jeddah, paints and makes prints, and teaches by day. Her work draws on the letters of the Arabic alphabet and the traces of printed ink, and it carries no titles: she believes a title narrows the viewer’s imagination. She has exhibited in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Germany and South Korea.
Biography
Ola Hejazi usually leaves her works untitled. Her explanation is simple: in her view a title limits the imagination, and the viewer starts looking in the picture for what he has been told to find.
By some accounts she was born in Jeddah, by others in Lebanon. Her year of birth is unknown. She lives and works in Jeddah, a Saudi artist and art teacher.
Her education is not an artistic one in the narrow sense. She graduated from the Faculty of Arabic Literature, according to some accounts at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where she studied literature and rhetoric, and she holds a diploma in educational psychology. Perhaps that explains her interest in the word as a material: the basis of her painting and printmaking is the Arabic alphabet and calligraphy, and in her prints printed ink plays an important part. Among colours she readily takes bright ones, above all red and blue. She says herself that her work reflects constant relocations and attempts to reconstruct the memories left behind. I would not read this as a biographical comment on every piece: without titles, the works do not demand such a reading.
She began exhibiting in the early 2000s. In 2002 she won second place at the Abha Cultural Prize, established by Prince Khalid al-Faisal. In 2003 and 2004 she took first place in the competition for Saudi women artists in Riyadh; in 2003 she received the Saudi Arabian Airlines “Mulawwan Saudia” prize (a conventional rendering of the name), and in 2004 an acquisition prize from the state youth authority and a commemorative shield from the MBC television channel. In 2008 she was honoured by the Al-Kharafi Kuwait Biennial of Contemporary Art. In 2009 she received an award at the second Luxor Painting Symposium and second place in the “Al-Safir” competition. In 2010 she was honoured by the Gulf Women Artists Forum in Muscat. In 2011 she won first prize at the art symposium of the second Qatar Maritime Festival, and the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia gave her its small-works acquisition prize.
Among her exhibitions abroad are “Chronos and Kairos” in Essen (2012), the Saudi Cultural Week in Korea (2012) and “Nun wa Alkalam” at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (2013). In Jeddah, as part of Art Jeddah in 2016, she took part in the exhibition “Earth Ever and After 21-39”.
Profile notes