Manal Al Dowayan: And I, will I forget?

Sabrina Amrani presents the first solo show in Spain by Saudi artist Manal Al Dowayan.
The exhibition “And I, Will I Forget?” deals with the concept of memory and the act of re-appropriating narratives, inviting the viewer to explore the notion of memory and oblivion. The artworks on show include canvas, paper, aluminium and copper plates, inspired by the artist’s father journey to the US in the 1960s-1970s.

The artist’s practice is marked by an eagerness to create pieces about formless and invisible phenomena: oblivion and its opposite, remembering. At the age of 12, she received from her father a box containing 1,000 Kodachrome slides that he had taken between 1962 –leaving Saudi Arabia to the USA– and 1973 when his daughter was born.

When she grew up, she understood that those photos were not simple toys but an attempt to bridge the gap of a radical disconnection from home. Her father had started to deteriorate into Alzheimer and was not able to answer her questions. It became impossible to decipher the locations and identify the protagonists. Were the images developed at some point? The prints never survived. The slides remained as custodians of an enigmatic memory with no recorded history.