Organised by Arab Media Watch
Date & time: Monday 22 September 2008, 6.30-8.30pm
Venue: Arab British Chamber of Commerce, 43 Upper Grosvenor St, London W1K 2NJ
Admission free, all welcome
The work of internationally renowned artist Mona Saudi (www.monasaudi.com) has been featured in solo and collective exhibitions in the Arab world, Europe, the US and Asia. Images of such work will projected at the event.
Her sculptures - produced in marble, granite, limestone and other materials - are found in private collections worldwide, and in museums in Paris, Amman, Washington DC and Beirut. Mona's large-scale sculptures are displayed in public places in Amman, Paris and Beirut.
Born in Jordan and living in Lebanon, she studied sculpture at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. Mona says becoming an artist was her childhood dream. During the last 40 years, she has created several hundred sculptures, yet she says her imagination is still full of sculptures to be born, as if stones are pregnant with forms waiting to be delivered.
Mona is also a painter. Recently, she produced a series of drawings entitled Poetic Inspirations. These collections are inspired by poems from the famous poets Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis and Saint John Perse.
Her exceptional book Forty Years in Sculpture reflects her long companionship with stone and sculpture. It contains more than 200 photos of her sculptures as well as drawings, text by the artist, and reviews by eminent Arab and international artists and writers. It will be on sale at the event at £50, and is not available elsewhere in London.
For more info, or to be put on the guest list, please contact:
07956 455 528
07956 581 813
info@arabmediawatch.com
Reviews of Mona Saudi's Work
Paul Richard, Washington Post
"Mona Saudi's stone pieces simultaneously suggest the ageless and the modern. The seed-like, egg-like roundness suggests life just about to burst out of coloured stones."
Mary Phillips, Jerusalem Star
"In her magic hands, stones come to life. Mona Saudi, a sculptress of international standard and repute, has held solo exhibitions in Paris, Beirut, Kuwait and Washington, yet she lives and works in a peaceful enclave in Beirut. She has always chosen to work in stone, which she loves for its timelessness, whether white marble from Carrara, pink limestone from Irbed, or black diorite from Syria. Sculpture for her is an act of love and of bringing out the dormant life of the stone. She finds that the nature of the individual stone leads her to the form of the sculpture itself."
Anne Mullin Burnham, Arab Perspective, Washington
"The sculptures of Mona Saudi bring the Greek word Omphalos to mind. From there, it echoes in the ear just as the sculptures themselves remain in the memory's eye - rich as notes of a cello. Omphalos means, literally, navel, and essentially, the stone at the centre of the earth, the point of beginning from which life radiates."
Georges Zeeny, Lebanese art and literary critic
"Unity and consistency are outstanding qualities of Mona Saudi's work, a unique style distinguished by three major characteristics: precision, organic vitality and sensuality."