Hend al-Mansour

Hend al-Mansour (born 1956) is a Saudi Arabian-American visual artist and physician. Her printed silkscreens, installation art and portraits of Muslim women explore the religious and social belief systems of Arab communities. She earned degrees in cardiology and internal medicine, practicing medicine for 20 years. She immigrated to the United States in 1997 after receiving a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. She then pursued an art career, attending the Women's Art Institute at St. Catherine University and earning her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Biography

Hend al-Mansour was born in Hofuf, Saudi Arabia in 1956. She obtained a degree of medicine from Cairo University in 1981. For 20 years, al-Mansour worked as a physician, as an Arab women, a career that provided her "personal freedom and self-worth." She practiced medicine in Saudi Arabia at Hofuf and Riyadh until 1997 when she immigrated to the United States, having received a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. During her medical career she obtained degrees in internal medicine and cardiology.

In 2000 she shifted careers from medicine to art, attending the Women's Art Institute at St. Catherine University. She was the program's teaching assistant the following year. While a student and participating in the institute she began to answer the question "Who's your audience?" She obtained a master of fine art from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2002. Al-Mansour is an installation artist, silkscreen printer and a public speaker. Her work is about women in the Islamic world. She creates spaces representing private lives of women out of silk-screened fabrics. She has shown in Minnesota and other states in the United States as well as in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

She is married to Dr. David Penchansky, a theology professor and writer, and they live in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Theme, media and style

Al-Mansour's work explores religious and social belief systems of the Arab communities, especially those dealing with women, sexuality and understanding the other. She uses Arabic calligraphy, images of Arab people, Islamic ornamentation and architecture. She investigates the status of contemporary Arab art and cultivates its independence from Western art and its distinction from other Middle Eastern and Islamic identities. She defines her audience as people from home, Saudi Arabia, and people in the Middle East because they can most easily identify with her work and she is a part of them. As an American immigrant she feels comfortable in the United States, but explains that she typically needs to offer lengthy introductions to her use of religious and feminist ritualistic symbols to non Saudi or Arab women and audiences.

Al-Mansour's work is often portraiture of Muslim women as architectural spaces made out of silk screened, dyed or hennaed fabrics. Her images are stylized figures and faces intertwined with Islamic ornamentation in a repetitive style. She uses large sheets of silk, wool, canvas, or other fabric. Her installations resemble shrines, tents or mosques in which the viewer walks in. Her installations include archways, domes, sand, cushions, rugs, bowls or geometric sculptures and distinctive Middle Eastern perfumes and scents that reflect aspects of her subjects' personalities and cultures.

Al-Mansour creates portraits of Muslim women and in the exhibition, How to Be a Feminist Artist, at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Catherine University, her self-portraiture examines the role of Muslim women in modern society. She includes traditional Islamic elements like passages from the Quran and vivid Arabic textile patterns and designs to express gender disparity towards women.

Selected exhibitions

• The Great Mother of Islam 2014, at Cathering G Murphy gallery
• How to Be a Feminist Artist 2014, at Catherine G Murphy gallery
• Continuity and Change (group show) 2007, at [1]
• Fatimah in America (solo show) 2007, at [2]
• Arousat Al-Moulid (design and choriography) 2007, in collaboration with Jawaahir Dance Company
• Prizm of longing (group show) 2006, at the The Phipps Center for the Arts
• Fatimah in America (3 women show) 2005, at the Sacred Art Festival in the University of St. Thomas
• Peac in the house (theater installation) 2004, commissioned by Voices of Sepharad
• The three faces of Mary (solo show) 2004, Wisdom Ways of the College of St. Catherine.
• Sheherazade Risking the Passage (Muslim women show) 2003, at Mira Gallery sponsored by WARM.
• Arab Eye (group show) 2002, at Babylon art Gallery.
• Heightened Awareness (2 women show) 2001, at Catherine G Murphy gallery

External links

• Hend's home page
• Thinking about Fatimah in America
• Prescription for art: Women's Press
• The personalities behind the photos: The Gustavian weekly
• Hend Al-Mansour creates art to question women's roles
• Hend Al-Mansour on MN Original
• Intermedia Arts Bio
• Twin Cities Saudi woman bridges gap between Islamic and Western worlds through art