For a long time, Manal AlDowayan did not see herself as an artist. Having grown up in the Saudi Aramco residential compound in Dhahran during the 1980s, she witnessed few, if any, examples of full-time artmaking, let alone by women. Confining her practice to her spare time, AlDowayan studied computer science at Boston’s Suffolk University and, after graduating in 1999, became a programmer at the oil company where her father worked. During her MSc at London Metropolitan University, AlDowayan secretly enrolled in nearby art classes, yearning for the chance to explore her practice further. Finally, in 2003, a one-year photography workshop in Spain culminated in her first-ever exhibition, the group show “Looking Through the Glass” in Burgos. Her work—in particular, multiple series of black-and-white portraits—was met with immediate acclaim, receiving praise for her candid, critical depictions of Saudi identity, both individual and collective.

AlDowayan has since become an active figure in Saudi Arabia's art scene, known primarily for her photography and her large-scale, participatory installations. Her latest projects, Shifting Sands, a Battle Song, for the 60th Venice Biennale, and Oasis of Stories, for Wadi AlFann, will return the London-based artist to her roots. Both installations will draw upon AlDowayan’s two-decade-long exploration of collective memory, integrating artworks by AlUla residents to immortalize their individual stories. In this conversation she discusses the historical inspirations behind her ongoing projects, the politics of archiving, her fascination with remembrance, and how, against all odds, the former computer programmer came to be one of Saudi’s most distinguished artists.