DUBAI: Despite being a pioneering female painter and publisher in Saudi Arabia, Nawal Mossalli is still little-known. But she is slowly being introduced to younger generations thanks to a few initiatives, one of which is the ongoing group exhibition in AlUla, “More than Meets the Eye.”
As the daughter of a diplomat, Mossalli traveled a lot in her youth, broadening her experience and knowledge. And even when she was in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Effat Farag, curator of “More than Meets the Eye,” points out, “Because her father was an ambassador, she had the opportunity of rubbing shoulders with another kind of audience inside Saudi Arabia,” says Farag. “Nawal has a unique personality. When she speaks, she has different accents, from Egyptian to Syrian, because she stayed in different places.”
Her work, too, is unique, with its own interesting sense of perspective. Since she began painting in the 1980s, Mossalli has focused heavily on depicting nature, particularly plants, combined with buildings and monuments from the Kingdom. Her compositions are often filled with green and brown palm trees in the foreground, with the buildings relegated to the background. One could argue that Mossalli’s work is environmental art, which is being widely practiced by contemporary artists.
Mossalli painted views from Riyadh, Diriyah, Makkah and Madinah, often portraying mosques too — including the Prophet’s Mosque — as well as the Kaaba. “She archived Saudi Arabia’s landscape through her painting. (Collectively,) it’s like a huge canvas with all these landscapes, from north to south, east to west,” Farag says. She also painted figurative imagery, depicting women’s clothing from certain parts of the country, such as outfits worn by female farmers in the Asir region.
Mossalli has held a number of exhibitions at home and abroad, including in Egypt, the UK, Italy and Switzerland. She has also published a book on Saudi’s varied geographies, which includes her own paintings. Her work can perhaps best be described as a diary, full of snapshots of memories that inspired her. As the Syrian art historian Afif Bahnassi once said of her: “She reached within her practice her own private world.”
