Prescription for art

Hend Al-Mansour lived the tensions between public and private in her homeland of Saudi Arabia, a place where women may not show their faces on the street. She was trained as a doctor, able to see men as patients in her hospital, but in private, not allowed to meet men outside of her family. Here in the United States, Al-Mansour changed careers from doctor to artist, and she now uses her creativity to fuel artworks that challenge Islamic culture's status quo.

Al-Mansour was born in Hofuf, a town built on an oasis in Saudi Arabia's eastern desert. Her mother was just 15 years old when she gave birth to Hend, her first child. The daughter describes her mother as a tomboy growing up, a child who early on recognized that in Saudi Arabia, womanhood is a liability.

Al-Mansour remembers her mother sketching during the rare moments she wasn't tending to her brood of 12 children. Inspired, she took up the hobby too. "My major medium was pencil, drawing on anything I could get my hands on. I don't remember a day passing by when I wasn't drawing. Even when I was in medical college, even after being a doctor."

Yet, art was not considered when it came time to choose a vocation. At 16, Al-Mansour was allowed by her parents to study medicine in Cairo, in part, she says, because they recognized that she was chafing under the strict sex segregation in her homeland. After eight years of training in internal medicine and cardiology, Al-Mansour returned to Saudi Arabia, eventually settling into work at a highly respected international hospital in the capital city of Riyadh. The "schizophrenic" state structure that allowed her to practice medicine but not operate a car continued to nag at her. One outlet was art.

Her first show
Al-Mansour learned that a woman-only branch of a bank was offering customers a chance to display their artworks on its walls; she signed up for an account and had her first show. But in order for her male colleagues at the hospital to view her art, she says, the bank opened after hours for them for a separate showing. "I was the only woman there; of course the artist has to be there," she said. "I had [interest from] newspapers, journalists. They are hungry and thirsty for something like this." Only after that show did she learn she had neglected to secure the proper permits from the Saudi cultural authorities. Future shows would be hampered by the state's efforts to control her work.

Her early pieces, she explained, were simple: "Women dancing, a sad woman, a woman standing by the sea, just a woman image, only without covering, without the veil." And just as an uncovered woman's body is against the law in public, so it is in art.

Al-Mansour persisted in her efforts to present her art. "I tried to find places for my work. I did a show in my house. It was a little risky, if somebody knew about it. The religious police can come into your house without warning, without permission. If they find [unrelated] men and women together you can go to jail."

From doctor to artist
By the time Al-Mansour reached the age of 40, she'd had enough. "I wanted to live a normal life. I wanted to date, and I wanted to mix with men, just to talk with men. It was very limiting to be just with my own sex all the time." A colleague at the Riyadh hospital helped Al-Mansour secure a two-year post at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which she began in 1997.

As a part of the sponsorship to the program, she submitted to a complete physical exam. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, and though she was successfully treated for the disease, the diagnosis affected her deeply. "You start thinking of your life, what is the most precious thing in life, what do you value." Taking stock, Al-Mansour sank into a deep depression. She realized, she said, that her work "was dragging me down. I couldn't even wake up in the morning. Slowly I realized that I had to change my career into something that I really like."

She enrolled in classes at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, her first-ever experience with formal art instruction, while still working at the Mayo Clinic. When her fellowship was over, she left medicine for good. "I felt weird because I was older [than the majority of the full-time art students] but I was studying something I loved. In Egypt I was just playing at study." When Al-Mansour went on to earn a master of fine arts degree in 2002 with a major in painting, her interest in installation pieces grew. Her installation "Fatimah in America," most recently on display at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, directly explores the clash between public and private in its representation of four Islamic immigrant women's private spaces.

"When you enter [the piece], you leave the public world of the gallery, and you enter a different world." Fabrics within "Fatimah" were silk-screened not in ink or paint but in henna, a dye traditionally used for the private beautification of women. "I am using women's private commodity, so you know right away that it's a woman's perspective," a perspective, she noted, that is not always open to the outside world. "There is a tension there, and I think people felt discomfort a little bit before they crossed that barrier [into the piece]. That is intentional. When you cross that threshold, you are more willing to be more understanding to this person."

Communication at the core
Al-Mansour said she has received some negative feedback from other Muslims not only about her art, also her outspokenness in the media. "The Muslim community here, I don't think they like to come to my work. They think my shows are against Islam and that's wrong. They don't want to say anything negative about themselves, because that would feed into stereotypes, that would accentuate the hostility towards them. My approach is different. I want to talk about our problems. You can't talk secretly about your problems. Other people [outside the community] can see them, and can give you feedback. I think when people see that we discuss our problems, they will respect us more."

"We [Muslims] cannot bring religion to our daily discussion because it is taboo. We have to just accept what was taught to us. We treat art the same way. Islamic calligraphy and art has to have its traditional style. It doesn't change. What I want to do is make Islamic art suitable for our use today," Al-Mansour said, adding that she'd like to see religion become as contemporary as her art. "That is why my art is full of religious icons and references. I want religion to be something that is changeable."

A group of veiled Somali women who viewed "Fatimah in America" shared with Al-Mansour their discomfort with one image within the greater piece. In it, Muhammad reaches towards Allah, who, in her bare-breasted glory, is obviously female. In their hurry to condemn the naked woman's body, "I don't think they noticed that Allah was a woman," Al-Mansour admitted. In their discussions of the work, "we did not change each other's minds, but I think they found out that people talk about this. It's safe to discuss. I felt very good about that. [In the end,] they respected my art."

In reflection ...
Today, at 50, Al-Mansour is happily married, healthy, and working steadily in a field she loves. Despite the journey she's traveled, both physically and emotionally, Al-Mansour admits that she still struggles with her self-confidence. "Even though I have intellectualized that men and women are equal, in my subconscious, I still have the feeling that I might not be. Maybe they're right," she says, referring to the patriarchal culture of her homeland. "Maybe a woman's brain is weak."

Al-Mansour has no regrets about her life choices. "Now I feel if I died tomorrow, I'd be happy. It's never too late. In just a few years, you can give real meaning to your life."