On September 18, the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture—better known as Ithra—flung open the doors to its latest exhibition, Horizon in Their Hands: Women Artists from the Arab World (1960s–1980s). The show, presented in collaboration with the UAE-based Barjeel Art Foundation, is not just another exhibition, but a reclamation. 50 Arab women artists, many of whom history has pushed to the margins, are finally being given the space to take up the cultural room they always deserved.
For decades, the art historical canon—whether in the Arab world or globally—has sidelined women. Their work was often categorized as “craft” or “domestic,” dismissed as supplementary to the “serious” work of their male counterparts. Horizon in Their Hands turns that narrative inside out. From Saudi pioneer Safeya Binzagr, the first woman to hold a solo exhibition in the Kingdom, to Egyptian revolutionary painter Inji Efflatoun, whose work carried the fire of resistance, these women actively shaped the region’s cultural identity.
The show spans painting, ceramics, glass, sculpture, and tapestry. It brings together icons like Morocco’s Chaibia Talal, whose vibrant canvases reimagined rural mythologies, alongside Palestinian ceramicist Vera Tamari, whose Palestinian Women at Work (1979) is an aching exploration of memory and loss. The diversity of mediums is deliberate, raising questions about where art ends and craft begins—questions that women artists have historically been forced to navigate more than anyone else.
“Featuring the work of 50 seminal figures, this exhibition revisits the contributions of women artists who challenged the very definition of art,” says curator Rémi Homs. And indeed, the works on display blur those arbitrary lines, showing that textiles, clay, or brass can carry as much cultural and political charge as oil on canvas.
Since opening in 2018, Ithra has emerged as one of the Middle East’s most dynamic cultural institutions. Backed by Aramco but operating as a creative hub in Dhahran, it houses everything from a library and cinema to a theater and museum. Its mission has always been to enrich cultural dialogue and spotlight stories that might otherwise be erased. This exhibition does just that: foregrounding women whose contributions have been underrecognized, even within their own countries.
For Barjeel Art Foundation, the Sharjah-based initiative known for its extensive collection of modern Arab art, this collaboration also fits neatly into its ethos of amplifying voices across North Africa and West Asia. Together, Ithra and Barjeel are staging a reminder that modern Arab art history cannot be told without women.
What makes Horizon in Their Hands so vital is not only that it revisits the past, but that it does so with urgency. In a time when institutions worldwide are being forced to reckon with representation, Ithra is making a bold statement.
The exhibition will be on view until Feb. 14, 2026, with ticketed access to the museum gallery available through booking online.
Main image: Zina Amour, Scène de Famille (Family Scene), 1967. Oil on wood panel. Courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, Sharjah.
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