Born 1972 in Swansea, United Kingdom , Lives and works in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Filwa Nazer is a Saudi multi-media artist. She lives and works in Jeddah.
Nazer began her creative journey as a fashion designer and graduated from Milan’s Marangoni school of Fashion and design. Her practice ranges from digital print, collage, textile to appropriation of photography and centers around questioning the emotional and psychological identity in relation to spatial and social contexts.
In her recent practice the artist employed textiles and sewing techniques as a medium to explore relationships between our bodies & the spaces we occupy, thus unveiling an intimate experimental process that reflects the tensions inherent in both.
Filwa participated in several exhibitions which include: State of Fashion Biennale, Holland (2024), DESERT X, Al Ula (2024), “Perceptible Rhythms, Alternative temporalities“ Middle East Institute Washington (2022), La Biennale de Lyon, France (2022) , Diriyah Biennale (2021) , “Saudi Modern “ Jeddah (2021).
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Preserving Shadows
Commissioned by Royal Commission of Al Ula | DESERT X, Al Ula 2024Inspired by a pre-Islamic belief amongst Bedouins – that spirits inhabit certain shrubs and ancient sites – Filwa Nazer explores ideas of hostility and fear in relation to the nature of the desert.
There is a story that recounts an incident where two men set fire to a bush causing two Jinn to escape in the form of snakes, snakes which then killed them. Such story and others, instilled in people the belief in bad omen and the existence of Jinn in Madai’n Salih near Al-Ula. Nazer responds to the idea of the supernatural and the awe of the unknown with an installation that mimics the abstract wavy shape of a black snake with spiky triangles of transparent steel mesh layered one after another, reflecting on how humans create monsters with their anxieties and anguish. The juxtaposition of different types of black steel mesh creates an eerie play of shadows next to the undulating structure.
The serpent – historically a powerful symbol of rebirth, transformation, immortality and healing – represents here the incarnation of nature in its mysterious, devouring, and hostile guise.
The shadowy journey of walking the narrow path, reaching the head of this monstrous structure, is a metaphor for the transformative energy of the serpent as it sheds its skin. Once the visitor reaches the ascending edge, the darkness fades and he is faced with the vastness of desert and mountains. A recurring theme in Nazer’s work in recent years examines transformation as a vulnerable process, often imbued with resistance and tension, and with Preserving Shadows she revisits this theme, probing it in relation to the desert environment of AlUla. The work, which takes on a large-scale architectural form, stands in contrast to Nazer’s more intimate and delicate works; yet the hollow body evokes the transparency and energy of her softer works.
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Ambivalent Bodies
Commissioned by Saudi Ministry of Culture ‘’Woven Spaces “ exhibition -
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Five Women
Commissioned by Diriyah Biennale Foundation -
Five Women
Commissioned by Diriyah Biennale FoundationFive Women is a group of sculptural works made of textiles and haberdashery. Here, Nazer explores themes of transition, transformation, and memory by deconstructing the designs, structures, patterns, and other elements of female dress.
Inspired by the mapping quality of pattern making, these delicate installations originated in a collection of dresses that embody the stories and memories of the Saudi women who once wore them. Each installation is a metonym for a specific and deeply personal story of the original owner, a diverse range of narratives of growth, transition, trauma, and other key moments. By considering these garments an extension of the body and an artifact of its memory; the work commemorates those moments of tension and vulnerability that lead to self-knowledge. Adopting an experimental, deconstructive approach, the artist recreates the patterns and details of each original garment, manipulates and rearranges details and structural elements to transform it into a new body.
These abstract, precariously constructed, and spatially permeable sculptures are created from an idiosyncratic lexicon of garment manufacturing and design elements, ultimately referring to the act of shedding layers in the process of change and transformation.
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The In-Between Project : Tactile Mapping | The Other is Another Body
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for March Project 2019Filwa Nazer examines the relationships between our bodies and the spaces we occupy, seeking to give physical form to our subjective experience of the energetic and psychological dimensions of these spaces. For her site specific installation in the heritage house, Bait Al Hurma , the body becomes a projection of the physical space of the house and a container for it’s energy. The space, triggers feelings of exposure , vulnerability and the lack of intimacy and protection. Nazer attempts to trace the imagined presence of the women who inhabited the house by layering shapes and lines from the architectural plans of the space as well as patterns from the garments and traditional clothing they presumably wore on fabric and latex.
Comprising two bodies of work, Nazer’s In-Between represents a space of transformation and becoming ;
It is the space in the middle of the inside and outside, between subjectivity and objectivity, intimacy and hostility, connection and separation. Tactile Mapping consists of six latex works, which echoes the vulnerability of Bait Al Hurma through works sewn and embroidered on latex that are stretched across various niches in the house. The Other is Another Body , consists of two large-scale black netting sculptures positioned in the center of the heritage house courtyard, a vertical manifestation of an awkward becoming. -
Tactile Mapping Series
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation I Saudi Ministry of Culture collection, Riyadh -
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The Other is Another Body
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Anatomy of winning’
Commissioned by Saudi Art Council For 2139 Jeddah Art exhibition ‘Refusing to be still’, Curated by Vassilis Oikonomopoulos“Anatomy of winning’’ is a three-panel work on paper that shows indistinct historical images relating to the pioneering Saudi football club Al- Ittihad, layered in parts with collage of images of footballers and images of handling of trophies and cups. The sharp images of the collage contrast and interrupt the almost abstract flow of the background and create tension in the visual narrative.
Hailed as the people’s club; Al-Ittihad Popularity transcends class and ethnicity and mirrors the city of Jeddah’s root identity of multiculturalism and openness.
Reflecting on the club’s history, its glories and struggles, and how it consistently mirrored Jeddah’s social fabric and socio-political and economic influences; the artist raises questions of identity, and whether the values that were at the heart of both Jeddah and the club early on are still relevant today.
