Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali

Biography

One of her first street pieces, “Mecca Street Signs”, showed the skyline of the holy city, which can barely be seen behind the high-rise buildings that surround it. The artist recalled that she was at first wary of the reaction, but street art seemed to her the ideal medium for testing it. She placed the drawings in the historic districts of Jeddah so that as many people as possible would see them. They were not meant to be beautiful objects: she wanted to start a conversation.

Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali was born in Jeddah in 1989, and her family has its roots in the Hejaz.

She studied graphic design at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, then continued her studies at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London. From design, clean graphics and the stencil came into her work. Researchers describe her as one of the first people in Saudi Arabia to work with graffiti and street art. It was the street that brought her recognition, but she also works as an illustrator, painter and ceramicist. The material of her work is popular Saudi and Arab culture. Through it she addresses the position of women, relations within society, and religion and tradition. Among her best-known paintings is “Bride of the Mawlid” (2012): a young woman in Hejazi dress, with a house from the Hejaz behind her and a sheet of the newspaper Saut al-Hijaz as the background. A companion piece, “Dervish”, was conceived as its pair. In 2012 her work was included in “Soft Power” at Alaan Artspace; by some accounts, the exhibition was held in Riyadh. Her work was shown at the British Museum in the same year. Later it was exhibited in “We Need to Talk” in Jeddah, organised by the independent group Edge of Arabia, which supports interest in contemporary Arab art.

From 2020 she began to take up motherhood as a theme in her work, which she describes as part of her “journey through life as a woman.”