Welcome to the documentary from the BBC world service where we report the world, however difficult the issue, however hard to reach costs from the BBC world service. I supported by advertising tyre bad barging in to your favorite news broadcasts, good news free listening on amazon music is included with your prime membership, just amazon, dot com, slash ad free news broadcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads It was also a guy shows every front of drivers such as me. How that hey, I'm ryan reynolds recently, I asked mint mobile's legal team. If big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation, they said yes and then, when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said what the fuck are you talking about you insane hollywood. So to recap: we're cutting the price of mint, unlimited from thirty dollars a month to just fifteen dollars a month. Give it a try

and mobile dot com, slash, switch effect, also proper treatment, plus taxes and peace promoting for new customers for a limited time. Unlimited more than forty gigabytes per month, loan spell turns out, meant mobile dot, com, I the global story with smart takes and fresh perspective on one a good news story. Every monday to friday, from the BBC world service search for the global story, wherever you get, your bbc see costs to find out more Barton, in the studio from the BBC world service the programme investigates the creative process when you make an art work that is very complex? I really give it a lot of time, and so what I do is I just absorbed and greed and just sit. in my brain and then my body and sometimes tears com this time for focusing on an artist who started out twenty years ago, challenging the role of women.

arab society. She grew up in questioning of history, have been recorded and imagining a more inclusive future. There was just a few that were doing this. There was really very, very blurry passed to look at no archive. There is no like standing artists and exhibitions. I can go to look all here's an elder artists. I cannot ask them questions, our doing and is now one of the most internationally known artists from Saudi Arabia. You have public missions and museums being built and they need to acquire works. You have land are to have a design. People wanted to get involved in hotels is just crazy right now showing work at the guggenheim in new york, the british museum and the lacma in l a soon will be representing her country at the venice ben ali, and I am delighted to be given exclusive access terminal and she continues her work on a huge multi year project they came to his head.

dream dream with no limitations. I just made up an artwork a few years. Later they came back to me and said what we like if we want to make it now, we have reached the point where we have a drawing. We have allowed once complete. This amazing commission called oasis of story we'll have a permanent home in saudi arabia's astounding, new valley of arts. This will be a place of exploration. It's not easily reach that it's not a guided tour that you can do in a day. It's in a sense of discovery sits within this kind of landscape I'm melissa, greenland and arts, journalist working for the world and this is in the snow manila, darwin, saudi artist from the baby world service.

Monitoring and studio is based here in north london, in a quiet, mezzanine filled with books, like cats and sketches I come on and I'm good sorry. I just said this is where my studio is this balcony. Can you separate work a life or you're, always mixing the two? I mixed, to this, in my opinion, this is a unique approach. I think now, I'm realizing, because I have a studio always inside my home. That's that's throughout my life or throughout my artistic career, so that I can work all the time. Where are we going to the studio If these little rogues throw fellows, I mean it, it feels more sadie so here little matchless here. Well, those pillars are from morocco.

I had one honeymoon in little this meeting will now ass. She returns from a trip to saudi arabia, where she's been continuing her work most ambitious artwork. Yet the project started in two thousand and sixteen still ongoing and probably be finished, and twenty twenty six still long time to build an artwork ten years yeah. So the project is inspired in form. By old town in a angola and there it's a month city that has existed for about six hundred years. The last inhabitants were living. There are nineteen, eighty three, they left it and relocated to suburban areas, while that they were living there for so long and with no electricity and no water system. it was meant to be a winter city mn in the summers they move back to their farms where everything exists and that's more comfortable. The concept started with my earliest visit sterner than two thousand twelve

and I've always noticed that the preservation of mud walls is an obsession. Mud walls cannot stay without human interaction and the now that the old town has no humans in it. What does it mean to have walls protected without the stories? So that was my first thinking standing on this high mountain, where you can see all the structures they're falling apart and very, very empty and dark. Then I also walked around and ala and everywhere in every corner. You will always find rock inscriptions written by humans for thousands and thousands of years in different languages coming from different cultures, religions and inscribed their animals. They inscribe their names, prayers tools. So rees, wars, battles and I started

wonder you know, with the protection of all the places of an owner under the unesco heritage sites, type of rules and the people there are also protected, whereas their narrative, and so I decided that I will use the form of the walls of the old tongue because of its closeness to them, and it was there last dwelling gather before everybody discovered them and create a series of laws in this beautiful valley, flanked by two mountains. On these walls. I will be engraving the stories of the people of an earlier that I've been collecting now for about a year, and you have up here behind her you're sitting. You have all these little rocks placed on each other's order, though, is Iraq's have collected over the years from Angola with permission

as it is a protected site. I couldn't bear leaving and I am in love really. I know I'm obsessed with a landscape that is not mine and I just keep going back to it and tried to think about why. Why do I love it so much? Why do I feel like? Maybe in a past life I had thing to do at this place, and so it started with one rock from every visit have now been well earned over now thirty nine times. My next trip is coming up open. My foot his trip today, other those being developed by saudi as a premium tourist and cultural destination. They are building how's museums, Harry centres, as well as

large scale, public artworks of wadi, a fan or valley of arts. I'm part of the first batch of five artist that have been selected. The selection includes james corral, Michael height, sir agnes, Dennis Martha and myself what he had done and the art that sits. There will be a place of exploration, easily, reach that it's not a guide. The tour that you can do in a day in a sense of discovery sits within this kind of landscape, so you probably go out on horseback or you know, go hiking in encounter my work and then mile. later you'll encounter. Another work by seems to rural, and then you know you height through may be a jeep come in to save you and drive you to the next spot and where you will look at agnes dennis work. And so the idea is for you to really connect with the landscape and use the artworks that are placed there as markers and once you,

it's an artwork, maybe that's where you want to end up one artwork and you want to spend the whole day their set up. Your tent sleep, wake up the next day and go to the next artwork. That is sort of the idea around land are and that's permanence bananas, work oasis of stories will honour the legacy of Alice inhabitants. She and her team will build a vast installation of walls based on the lay out of the ancient mud, brick, all town, the mountains use them sort of as observation spaces can climb the mountain and look at the artwork as a whole. another alternative way to experience. It is just either use your feet and walk through it. Bees was, are going to be sort of set up in a labyrinth, not amazed and then, The was will have inscriptions on them, that you can sit and contemplate and look out and think about, and it concludes with a beautiful view. This is the price that you

and up looking over an amazing. Never and the landscape of palms on these walls. She will carve drawing that tell the stories of those who live today in alabama Like their ancestors carved petrol cliffs to tell their stories thousands of years ago, so. here is a map that I've on my door to my studio, because it's the largest space, I have what I did it. I placed the map of the old tab under it and started tracing the northern and. southern facing walls. It doesn't look like a map of a town just like site sketch marks alongside a valley- and this is a step one of sort of conveying the idea and creating. Spaces, so you'll see here coming right across horizontally. Is this empty space,

just really where the mountain that sets the heart of the old town exists? But we don't have a mountain here so, if left to empty- and I think it's a great location for when you walk through the artwork- that's a spy to contemplate? There's a few spaces tat you see here at the bottom letters sort of square like another space appear. This was the mosque so that a sort of the community center, wherever be gathered, talk and have conversations down here is where the school was for the boy It's another one is a school for the girls. There is a place where orphans were kept and cared for, and how can you They done. The north and south facing walls, kind of not making sense but just making lines for swallowed the journey that people took,

to enter and Allah was a north south journey, so that was the first indicator. The second thing is the the sun, the wage rises and sets on these walls, and it thus rise very beautifully from this angle from the top and then sets, and so the the shadows just move like a beautiful wind of shadows very important than the desert, because you have nothing else to cover you from the sun and I'm hoping that during the day, people can still visit this artwork and use the shadows as a space for cooling to get these drawings. Macao has spent a year travelling back and forth to alba to conduct workshops with local residents, but to create a public artwork is one challenge, but to create a public artwork in the community that doesn't have public artworks or museum or a gallery is a cool.

Legally different setting, and you have to approach it in a very different way. You have to make sure that you are not an artist, that's landing on the community, dropping your art and getting out. You have to build trust and then there's the responsibility as an artist. You know I'm bringing a language, my language to landscape that has existed his. or a key for millennia, and who am I nothing, I'm in a dot and this stuff of humanity's. I need to be very respectful of how I placed this artwork. This is her typical method. Listening to the ideas of theirs and learning about their lives and then forming their stories into her own artworks. The reaction has been a lot of poetry that has hidden advice for the future? There is a lot of drawings of homes because of the change in the structure of living in and her now,

I live in the mud house and now you live in the modern house and you still got your grandfather's far but you don't know how long this farm is gonna last because nobody wants to work in full. Coming. Any more most youth want to work rangers, end storytellers for all the tourists coming into town. So There is an understanding of this loss, but also excitement for the future I have had children draw things like the shops. The new shops that have opened in that are the ones with english text on their banners. I've had them draw Ronaldo, christiana Rinaldo and, I said no to the t shirt to like: don't don't christianity, these in the team in Riyadh. What what does it have to do that? But then my hope, and came to me and said: listen having maradona when he arrived in ITALY. This is people at la football, but he changed something and christianity Rinaldo arriving in salary. has created an energy among the youth and an early.

Is not exempt from this energy, so we ve accepted all the Rinaldo. as so, you really have an imprint of what Saudi arabia's going through, but through the eyes of the Very small northern community right told them to think about this artwork as something that will stand for a hundred years and you go, you will find a rock that has an inscription. Somebody has left a trace people for some reason felt this to write their stories about, and then I started wondering are right. These are all the kingdoms that came before. Who are the current custodians of this place? The people than earlier. It's their story. Are they just going to remain as the storytellers of the kingdoms before them, but I think their story is also very important and it's a continuation to what was written before them, so this artwork will carry engraving

of the drawings and in that way you can go see the unesco heritage sites, the tombs, the rock inscriptions, that's history, and then you come to the contemporary and that's where you see the stories of the current people that live in an earlier. What are their concerns? What is what are their gods? What are their tools at their animals and the way they dwell the lived here, giving them a voice. I am giving them a gift. The witches and artwork that belongs to them so what are you doing here? Manner a lot of, People are amazing artists they bring me, and they show me incredible, drawing slammed stunned. So I was looking at her artwork. It is me saying that it's very hard to draw sometimes- and she had drawn the fig tree that she, in her garden. Then I told her either make it humongous the drawing or make it small, but very detailed, so that I can copy

While we were very maternal in it you draw if it wants to trying her out the This is the young boys football club they attended on workshops. They are so well behaved. Their captains had gathered them in a special location in the palm growth that I was running the workshop and they had prepared like us over out to me, and so they say thank you, miss miller for letting us participate, and I respond to them that I love you. Thank you for her being participants, and I can't wait to see you as adults my artwork and those are other, joins in front of them. Yes, they can,

doing drawings over and over. So I would give them one original good paper, and then I just give them white paper, because kids just love to run off and do these amazing drawing this planet upon tee right, there's alone, I'm gonna catch quota, It was not enough. He was conscious of a drawing with no story, and so I always asked them to tell me a story about them collaboration has always been at the heart of bananas practice in the early two thousands she took photographs of female friends and colleagues in a makeshift studio. At her parents house, the first jerky made

was. I am: is that right? A series of photographs now they're hanging in the british museum and and other eminent collections I mean the first thing that draws you in is the woman's eyes. I mean she is just looking right at you and she wants to tell you something but she's holding, and I don't even know the term what you use on a film set up or a clapper just to say what take it is with the with the scene and taken the role written in arabic, numerals and she's wearing the burqa, the kind of leather covering over her face, except for her eyes. So it's a real juxtaposition of you, know, professionalism and this kind of of bedouin accessories or bedouin tradition, and that something that is runs throughout the serious right. It's this juxtaposition of omens, job and bedwin, jewelry or accessories. This picture that you just described is

for months or who is, was a very well known film, director who did a movie called what either the striking black and white images show women confident and excited about the future but also point to the social restrictions around women's employment. At the time, king Abdullah Assad had just signalled reform saying that women were allowed to work according to their nature, and that, for me, was the trigger for this sort of concept of making this work is what is my nature and who defines it, and what does it mean? And at that point you know it felt to me that discussion was very philosophical

well, but in reality on the ground, I was already working all the people around me. The women were working in very interesting jobs, but truth be told. Only three percent of women had jobs at that point in time in saudi arabia. Today there is thirty. Five percent of women are working as a huge transformation. Just so many years I spoke to have a deal dean, a childhood friend of minerals and now one of the most senior women at the aramco oil company about what it was like seen from another twenty years ago. She gave me a steering wheel and she said, and then a photograph few behind the steering wheel. Is that ok- and I said yeah sure why not if she knew how she wanted me to look. So I held the steering wheel. and she said I think I wanna DR. She wanted that my eyes and said that was that picture with the steering wheel that became very

famous, and she knows everybody story. She remembers that and reflects on it and synthesizers it, and she makes the story from that. Then it's a superpower a studio back in london is a trove of remnants and memories of her most famous works, my little closet, which has no light so only daytime exploration, so there's a lot of packaging materials because I tend to quickly pack things. I have a lot of foam and here which I cut for my markets, decide this role of that you used the guggenheim perform an area that I mean these are all blurt broken ones, as I only I'll get the bad art and my studio apiece just fell on the floor. There I mean, there's so thin, and so I mean, as as we know, we got two smashing man. spoken. High performance was titled from shattered ruins. Now I shall bloom onto eggshell then porcelain, squirrels banal printed text and material

some social media that showed the cost women face both in the middle. And the west, then at one fell swoop the audience had the chance to smash. then banal invited me to reenact the moment. I don't know if you can, smash one right now. If I give you one of the broken ones, you will have a paranoia: don't know must choose the most messed up one, but you write that debt. The thrill If I'm honest was less in smashing these texts at the patriarchy, but just in smashing artwork cause you're, so condition to be so careful about and it really was- you know like it just felt so wrong, I I'm going to bang your fist, I'm going to break it with ok. When you break the fist, it might think breaking a twig yeah. ooh, you're people went on in

We were very satisfying three hundred people like all. At the same time, there is a view too, for sound Today, monarch continues to work with others on her projects, but oasis stories is at a drastically different scale. She has just returned. Allah with more than in drawings to incorporate into the artwork so how as she transition from a mode of participation and a solitary studio work For me, the idea of having anybody come into my studio during the process is very, very dangerous and allow people around me suffer because of the securities who work with me. My studio team, even my gal, are not allowed to come in during this sort of birthing process of an idea, I'm very deeply influenced by words by, feelings, and so I tried it in

myself in that time and create and think and write, and usually the artwork that I draw in this process- is absolutely not the artwork that I end up: making It is a safe space to start somewhere with weird things: drawings materials, don't work and break end and look ugly and then you set them aside. I meant the real work is burst after that its clear banal, feels a responsibility towards the people she includes. She does extensive research and cultures rituals so that she profoundly understands these important social elements. Sometimes I just wonder why: why does the coffee cup have to be served with the right hand and there is a limit of three cups and then, after that, you're imposing and if you take less than three cups then you have a problem with the host, so you know there's a balance why? Why did? traditions existence in the yes, we loved them. There's people

preserving them and and thinking about them and thriving in poetry and but for as an artist that looks at my community. I have much more critical eye with a lot of questions. her sculpture than installations, draw on months of research thinking about her, represent social norms and their critique sculptural form. How do you know when it's ready? Your eye has to look at it and feel comfortable looking at, sometimes even hank or put sculptures inside my bedroom, so that I sleep looking at them and wake up looking at them and if I do not feel this anxiety, look like I hate it, countless then that means it's ready now. This is such a time of change and investment and excitement in the contemporary art sphere, and in so doing you ve been of it. When it was very grass roots,

small. community led archie to this vast and of museums by any rules. Art fares now. Can you talk about how it feels to be to beyond the wave definitely what's happening in the contemporary art. Seen in saudi arabia is an incredible moment. I worry the next generation of artists if this kind of roller coaster mood continues its very hard to develop a practice of this kind of atmosphere of everybody's? Watching everybody's documenting on international platforms, still. An art scene is better than no art scene, I am in celebration today so have to now worry about an artwork that goes into the vault of western museum, but in my hometown it will be the permanent artwork

in manila. Dove again has taken up the mantle of representing her country ass. She prepared her work for the saudi pavilion at the forthcoming olympics of the art world. The venice be another in may, when men are began working there were no museums nor publicly visible art history. Her own work ended up in private collections abroad, but now she is making art that will be seen by her own country. An art market is developing. I've attended exists. Hence, in other cities, in the middle east and most of the eggs, actions are the same. Art crowd the tens, but in saudi arabia, when an art show opens incredible. Hundreds and hundreds of people come and you just want to go round the room where you from. Why are you here? I think the curiosities gives you energy and excitement, bring it on in this way managua doyen saudi artist, was presented by me, melissa, greenland, the code

His were actually burn, Melissa, greenland and annual manning and it was made in manchester production for the BBC world service. The globe story is a brand new cut costs from the BBC well service, bringing johnny stories into focus. Every week day we The close up look at one big global new story, so you can understand Really going on well News podcast brings you all the latest world events, we drill deed into one major story, providing insights from the BBC worldwide network of journalists, the global story- sense of the news with smart takes a fresh perspective. Such the global story. Wherever you get your bbc podcasts. The.

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