“Art is a response to violence”

The Sotheby’s Middle East expert, who founded Jeddah Art Week and Jaou-Tunis, makes public outreach a priority.

AM: How did you come to contemporary art?
Lina Lazaar: It was a passion but I never considered making it a profession; I wanted to work in finance. As luck would have it, a friend pointed me towards Sotheby’s, where I started out in the contemporary art department. This milieu allowed me to perfectly match between my professional goals and my interest in art. That was nearly ten years ago, when the first contemporary Arab art auctions took place, so I had the opportunity to develop a new kind of auction specific to these works. It was mad; there I was at 21, travelling around the Middle East and Iran looking for artists. Some were known at home but had not yet broken through on international markets. How could I promote a 70-year-old Iranian calligrapher whose work had never been sold outside his country? In November 2011, I curated the first pan-Arab exhibition at the Venice Biennial, which was so successful that I struck out on my own while remaining at Sotheby’s as the Arab world director. That marked the start of the Ibraaz projects, an online contemporary visual art platform, Jaou, a global cultural event in Tunis, and Jeddah Art Week.

Isn’t betting on contemporary art in a conservative milieu risky?
That’s why it gets so exciting. Contemporary art is still so elitist that the margin of manoeuvre is paradoxically real. That was my experience organising Jeddah Art Week (JAW) in 2013. Saudi Arabia is the world’s most conservative, most hermetically sealed society and the least favourable to the development of contemporary art. On the other hand, it’s also one of the most fertile grounds for creativity. The interest of the challenge lies in that paradox. At first, my idea was just to bring men and women together in the same public space, which is forbidden, except for during prayer in Mecca. The first JAW was based on this problem: how to intelligently bring people together for a purpose other than prayer in a semi-public space that has been turned over to private use but is accessible to every part of the community without ruffling feathers. The idea was to give Sotheby’s centre stage by displaying a certain number of works. The Saudi authorities agreed and we could open up to other artists.
The second JAW aimed to break down the walls between the different segments of Saudi society, which are like rigid castes that never mingle with each other. We set up exhibition spaces at 12 shops in a disaffected mall. Alongside works by a creative prince and artists like Abdulaziz Ashoor and Khalid Zahid, we also showed photographs by 25 Filipinos. Most work as servants. They explored the city as nobody else had ever done and revealed aspects unknown to the Saudis, such as their employees’ practice of Catholicism. How do Filipinos, who can be deported within 48 hours, have their children baptised? How do they celebrate Christmas or marry? This process took place when the elimination of many work permits was announced: 800,000 Filipinos were living under threat of deportation because they couldn’t regularise their papers. A real tragedy was brewing. We invited the Minister of Labour to open the exhibition, where he talked with the Filipinos, had his picture taken with them and promised to sort the matter out. That, too, is the magic of art! Cultural initiatives must serve as mediators in our part of the world.