Ithra, the Saudi Aramco-sponsored centre for world culture in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, has opened a new contemporary art show on photography in the Middle East, featuring artists such as Hazem Harb, Tasneem Al Sultan and Sultan bin Fahad.
The show includes several new commissions that will go into the Ithra Art Collection. Other works came from Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
It is one of the first contemporary art shows at the Ithra centre. Curator Candida Pestana explains that one of the reasons Ithra chose to do a photography exhibition was that the Saudi public was not yet familiar with contemporary art, with photography providing a good entry point.
Titled Our Mirrors, the show takes place within a series of small rooms built for the exhibition within the vast Ithra centre. They reflect the role of photography as a mirror on society, as well as the importance of domestic space as an intimate, private sphere in the Arab world.
