Grey Borders / Grey Frontiers, Edge of Arabia’s premier exhibition of contemporary Saudi art in Berlin, has been deemed an overriding success by those who attended.

With a densely packed room of collectors, ambassadors, journalists and art critics, as well as the 17 artists exhibiting, the atmosphere was on the opening night on Wednesday 9th June was unparalleled. According to the Edge of Arabia Twitter, Safia Dikersbach, attending, noted, “Edge of Arabia’s standard of the production is even higher than in the Berlin art scene.”

The following Saturday played host to a series of talks and seminars with the artists and some of the world’s most respected academics on Middle Eastern art at the celebrated Galerie Der Kunst at the heart of Berlin. Click here for more photos of the Symposium.

Edge of Arabia is pleased to announce Grey Borders / Grey Frontiers, the first ever show of contemporary Saudi art in Berlin.

At its core, the show explores the transgression of borders, inviting a league of artists from Saudi Arabia to one of Europe’s powerhouses for art. At once overtly positive and somewhat provocative, the title invites audiences to consider a space in which boundaries can be crossed, but not without a reminder of the risks involved.

The exhibited works explore both the cultural context in which each artist is working as well as the actual medium itself. Ahmed Mater’s ‘Boundary’ (2010) is an ornately carved Islamic prayer arch that the audience is encouraged to walk under, which, as they do, activates a automated bip akin to a metal detector. A similar theme can be traced in Maha Malluh’s photograms from the ‘Traditions and Modernity’ series (2010), which feature objects collected from her studio, displayed as if on a screen of an airport x-ray machine. It is the paradoxically the medium itself that transforms the commonplace into something much more mysterious and potentially threatening.

“With borders becoming undefined and frontiers wide open, these works take us through the way that societies and their individuals perceive and comment,” explains curator Rami Farook, founder and director of Dubai’s project space Traffic. “It will become clear upon seeing the work that the issues at stake aren’t only relevant to Saudi society but to the world at large.”

Instead of offering of any kind of resolution, the exhibition rather seeks to examine the risks involved with making art in a relative young society whose art history has still yet to be written. Complimenting the show will be a series of talks and seminars attended by some of the world’s most respected figures in contemporary Middle Eastern art.

Grey Borders/Grey Frontiers opens at Torstrasse 1, Berlin on 9th June.

“I love art, we paint at school but this workshop is different, in this moment I feel that I’m a famous artist.”

“I would like to be a fashion designer, I’m drawing some of my own designs in the mural and I WANT people to see them.”

These are just a handful of the comments made by some of the students who took part in Edge of Arabia’s education programme during the launch of our World Tour.

There were two workshops, one hosted by the prestigious Hewar Gallery on the 53rd floor of the Kingdom Tower itself, the other at the Al Tarbiya Al Ahlieah School, exclusively a girls zone! In both murals, the artists discussed themes of Saudi heritage, cultural identity and modernity with the children to get them inspired and expressive!

The students were selected from the Mawhiba schools partnership and the International Child Art Foundation and were from Saudi, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and the United States making it a truly international collaboration!

After two days of paint, stencils, music, laughter and a lot of fun, emerged two beautiful murals capturing the essence of some of our artists yet expressed through the eyes of the young creatives. They are on display in Jeddah in the office of Bab Rizq Jameel, our supportive education partners who share our value of inspiring creativity in young people in Saudi.

“Two days aren’t enough for me, I want to paint and paint and show everyone my work.”

I went to Putney High School today, my old 6th form, to give a talk to the girls about the exhibition and encourage them to visit before EoA packs up and re-locates. As always, I enjoyed sharing my knowledge and love for the project and hopefully inspiring some of the girls to use the artists and artwork in their own projects.

I was pleased to know that most of the girls had all come across the exhibition, on the underground, in the posters around their school. When I asked them what they knew of or what comes to mind if one says Saudi, I got the typical responses, ‘camels’, ‘desert’, ‘oil’, ’scarved women’… It was incredibly satisfying to show them a side to Saudi Arabia (and the Middle East) that many of them would never have come across if it wasn’t for this exhibition.

Shabina from Dunraven Scool in South London with the Edge of Arabia Teachers Pack.