Art exhibition seeks to encourage dialogue

The written word exudes power and transfers knowledge, even more so when words are written beautifully and artistically. The art exhibition “Pen to Paper” opens tomorrow at Athr Gallery in Jeddah to underline that notion and raise funds in collaboration with Al-Madad Foundation.
The joint initiative will host works of Moataz Nasr, Giovanni Ozzola, Ziad Antar, Larissa Sansour, Nasser Al-Salem, Tammam Azzam, UBIK, Yara El-Sherbini, Abdulnasser Gharem, Eve Arnold, and Xu Bing to support the foundations’ various literacy programs for impoverished children around the world. “Raising money is important and facilitates the concrete progress we need to make with our projects.
We will use the money to buy schoolbooks and pay for teachers’ training, and educational materials.
The funds that we raise through the sale of artworks are responsible for securing such means and play a big part in making progress,” said Aya Haider, founder of Al-Madad Foundation.
The charitable organization fosters humanitarian volunteerism and empowerment of underprivileged and disadvantaged children through art workshops, art exhibitions, and other community projects that allow for long term sustainment of learning and education.
“We hope to generate dialogue and thought around the cause in question. The exhibitions that we curate must be tightly conceived to resonate the issues we are trying to tackle.
We use art as a platform for discussion and cross-fertilizing thought for progressive action. This can create ripple effects for long-term bottom-up change in the way we view and value education,” Haider said.
Pen to Paper hopes to achieve clarity around the notions of true knowledge as a valuable and recyclable tool that can serve as a means to not only empower but also liberate through true learning.
The exhibition opens tomorrow evening from 7.30 p.m. to 9.00 p.m. at Athr Gallery and will run for a month.
To learn more about Al-Madad Foundation’s programs and how you can support them, visit www.almadadfoundation.org