FROM PRINT

Selections Arts Magazine – From Print

Portrait of Hayv Kahraman, The Third Line. Photograph © Sueraya Shaheen.

Reflected Selves Exploring Portrait Photography: Sueraya Shaheen

This article appeared in ‘Reflected Selves: Exploring Portrait Photography.’ This issue explores the intimate exchange between photographers and their subjects, revealing how identity, emotion, and connection shape each portrait. Featuring artists devoted to capturing authenticity and presence, this issue highlights…

Celine Khawam from the Series Smoking Area, 2007.

Reflected Selves Exploring Portrait Photography: Gilbert Hage

This article appeared in ‘Reflected Selves: Exploring Portrait Photography.’ This issue explores the intimate exchange between photographers and their subjects, revealing how identity, emotion, and connection shape each portrait. Featuring artists devoted to capturing authenticity and presence, this issue highlights photography…

Reflected Selves Exploring Portrait Photography: Marilyn Clark

This article appeared in ‘Reflected Selves: Exploring Portrait Photography.’ This issue explores the intimate exchange between photographers and their subjects, revealing how identity, emotion, and connection shape each portrait. Featuring artists devoted to capturing authenticity and presence, this issue highlights photography…

The Unseen, 2024.

Being Muhannad Shono: Acquisitions By Museums

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

Islamic Arts Biennale 2025, Photo by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation

Being Muhannad Shono: Islamic Arts Biennale

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

The Ground Day Breaks, 2024. Reclaimed sand, resin. Photo ©️ Artur Weber and Federico Acciardi.

Being Muhannad Shono: The Ground Day Breaks

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

I See You Brightest in the Dark, 2022. Photo Artur Weber

Being Muhannad Shono: I See You Brightest in the Dark

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

Absent Sky, ©Mario Guerra

Being Muhannad Shono: Absent Sky

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

A Song of Silence, 2022, 400 black palm stems. Photo ©️ Artur Weber.

Being Muhannad Shono: A Song of Silence

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

The Last Garden of Khidr is the imagined sculptural and illustrative aftermath of restricting the human imagination, a contemporary rendition of the character Khidr, an elusive figure spoken of in various Islamic narratives and found across many world myths and traditions. The origins of the name “Khidr” are obscure, with roots spreading from Quranic traditions into wider cultural lore, as well as traced through Western literary and architectural motifs dating back to the medieval age. One reading is that his name comes from akhdar (green, in Arabic), and he is, therefore, “The Green One” or “The Verdant One,” from whose head a garden grows. The artist mines this abundant tradition to explore ideas of creative freedom. Aniconism is the avoidance of images of sentient beings in some forms of Islamic art. In more stricter interpretations, this ban extends to God and deities to fictional characters and the depiction of the self. In this stricter uncompromising law, all living beings, and everything that exists fall under a prohibition of the mimicry of life. The artist recalls how, as a child, art teachers in Saudi Arabia would instruct him and other students to strike a line through the necks of illustrated drawings. This was a technical “work-around” to this religious prohibition conjured up by his teachers, but to Shono’s mind this contemporary commandment constituted a violent act, an attempted beheading of his imagined world and the living creations that dwell within it. The Last Garden of Khidr is the story of those who choose to reclaim their creative and imaginative minds and refuse to be silenced. Commissioned by the Saudi Art Council for the group show ‘I love you urgently’ curated by Maya El Khalil.

Being Muhannad Shono: Last Garden of Khidr

This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect…

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