Hands To Hands: Saudi Women’s Stories In the Project 'Lingering In the Light'

by Alexandra Mansilla

Hands To Hands: Saudi Women’s Stories In the Project 'Lingering In the Light'

18 Jul 2025

For five days in July, the Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall hosted the exhibition "Lingering in the Light" by artists Diana Smykova and Maria Motyleva. Anyone who managed to see it was genuinely lucky — it is the kind of show you walk out of wanting to come back. The exhibition felt alive; you could sense it breathing.

"Lingering in the Light" is a soft archive of women’s stories and family traditions — not written down or spoken aloud, but quietly handed from one person to another, woven into the process of making. Diana and Maria gathered these stories from women across Saudi Arabia, whose voices form the living heart of the exhibition. The artists travelled the country, lived with families, participated in rituals — immersing themselves in women’s daily lives and, in the process, becoming heirs to this memory.

They documented their journey through textiles (including embroidery of tree shadows), photography, and moving images. What came out of this work, what stories were shared, and how it all took shape — you will find in our interview.

— Maria, Diana, before we dive into the exhibition, could you please tell us a bit about yourselves — where you are from, and what kind of art you make?

Maria: I grew up between Moscow and Adygea. About 15 years ago, I moved to Europe and spent the last years living in various countries there.

I studied art in Portugal — that is really where my whole journey as an artist began. Two years ago, I left Europe, and I am no longer based there. However, I still continue to work in Switzerland. These days, I am more nomadic, moving between the Caucasus, Switzerland, and the Middle East. I came to Egypt not long ago and honestly just fell in love with the place — I am even thinking about staying here for a while.

In recent years, I have been really focused on textile art and embroidery. Alongside that, I do performance and participatory art and work very closely with the community. Many of my projects are created in close collaboration with women, migrants, and refugees, using textiles as a shared language — one that weaves together memory, care, and resistance in every thread. Still, I don’t limit myself strictly to textile art; I am always open to exploring new directions.

Diana: My main focus is photography, but the kind that sits right on the edge of visual art — somewhere between documentary and fine art, with a bit of post-documentary experimentation. Most of my projects are long-term and bring together text, video, and different forms of photographic manipulation, so what I do is always a bit broader and experimental than traditional photography. I also work with video and documentary movies.

Right now, I am based in Egypt. I wouldn’t say I live here permanently — my work has me constantly on the move — but Egypt has definitely become a kind of anchor for me. At the same time, I am originally from the Arkhangelsk region in Russia; that is still home. But there is something special about Egypt — it is a place I find myself always wanting to return to.

For a long time, I wanted to move beyond “digital” and explore what happens when photography crosses over into other mediums. I was really interested in how different forms can interact and play off each other. Working with Masha turned out to be the perfect chance to actually make that happen.

— By the way, how did you meet? And why did you decide to work on a project together?

Diana: We first met in Georgia, at a contemporary art festival that focused on themes of migration and home. Both of us were showing our work there — I presented a photography project, and Masha had a large installation.

What really brought us together was how similar our approach is: for both of us, it is incredibly important to work with real human stories and communities. We both care deeply about treating our subjects and their experiences with respect and sensitivity — it is not just about documenting, but about caring, listening, and paying close attention to the details.

That is how we became friends and made a pact that one day, we would work together on something. We met again in Egypt, where we originally planned to travel to Siwa — an oasis on the Libyan border that I have been interested in for a long time because of its unique embroidery traditions and strong women’s community.

Our plan was to do something participatory, rooted in local embroidery traditions, but in the end, we found ourselves in Saudi Arabia. We were accepted into an artist residency at Misk Art Institute, submitted our proposal, and started adapting our idea to the local context, which was completely new and unexpected for us.

— And that’s how the exhibition “Lingering in the Light” came about. Could you tell me a bit more about it?

Diana: We saw this project as a space where we could retell stories that we heard, working with folklore and oral narratives we collected from local women. The entire process was about reinterpreting and reframing these stories through art.

From the very start, we were inspired by the face-covering garment, reimagining it as a vessel of memory rooted in pre-Islamic traditions. Our research led us to the "Meccan veil" — a traditional garment from the Hijaz region, made of white silk and sometimes extending several meters in length.

Maria: The theme of masks, face covering, and concealment is deeply personal to me. I often explore the act of covering, both as a form of protection and a mode of expression. I come from the North Caucasus, and although I am not Muslim, I was raised in a predominantly Muslim region. This background has shaped my sensitivity to these themes, making it essential for us to approach this project with care, respect, and genuine curiosity.

On the one hand, we wanted to listen to real women’s stories. On the other hand, we also saw the veil as a poetic image, a metaphor — something that sits close to the face, almost like untold stories or hidden feelings.

For us, the veil became a canvas to tell stories. And our goal was to bring them into the light — to have a chance to touch them, feel their light and warmth and reflect it in our work.

— Why did you choose these particular colours? Why is the work blue and white?

Diana: For us, the blue and white palette is like a language — a flowing stream that connects memories, fragments of stories, and voices. When we arrived here, it was the driest and hottest season; everything around us was a sea of yellow, baked by the desert sun. We kept travelling — from the border with Yemen in Jazan region to AlUla— and everywhere, people seemed to be waiting for water, longing for that life-giving element. That search for water became a metaphor for us — a river of stories, a current of memory connecting everything around us.

Our main artistic method for printing images on textile was cyanotype — a chemical process that creates deep, saturated blue. The blue is dream-like; it instantly evokes water, the flow of life running through this endless desert. Here, surrounded by so much yellow, your eyes start to ache for any other colour.

The way the installation is built is also important — it is not just an object, it is a form of storytelling. It is a kind of timeline, like a landscape of time. Layers of history and memory are superimposed, as if you could see everything — all at once — in a single landscape, in a single frame.

This central piece literally travelled with us. We didn’t make it in a studio — it grew and evolved as we moved. We started by taking a few pieces of fabric and cyanotype chemicals, and we began printing right there, in the gardens of people. Later, Masha kept working on it — embroidering, for example, while sitting in a cave near the Yemeni border. Honestly, these weren’t the easiest conditions, but the work absorbed the journey.

— And there are also the branches!

Maria: The theme of gardens, trees, and the connection between women and the land — and their own gardens — took on special significance for us. Many women invited us into their gardens, shared stories about their families, showed us the homes where they grew up, and told us about swinging beneath a mango tree as children. For example, we met Raghat in AlUla, who introduced us to her mother and took us to her grandmother’s garden. Her grandmother, now elderly and living with dementia, is still alive, and Raghat told us about her own childhood in that very garden. We even made cyanotypes of branches from their favourite trees that grandmother planted — lime and mango.

For us, the garden became a place of memory. Branches and trees are like anchors in the landscape, points where memory continues: a grandmother plants a tree, the mother gathers its fruit, and now the daughter rests in its shade. That is why the theme of shadow became so important in our work.

Diana: The project and piece itself are multilayered. The first layer is silk, cotton, linen, and chiffon. The upper layer is a mesh fabric, onto which Masha embroidered the actual shadows of trees we collected from the places where we listened to and recorded stories. The garden became a central image for us — a place of memory, of women’s history, which so often remains in the shadows, outside official family trees, genealogies, and history textbooks. We were searching for stories that live “in the shade” — those passed down quietly through generations, yet rarely included in the dominant narrative; stories that exist, quite literally, in the shadow of family trees.

Masha: And in the desert, shade is also a metaphor for what every traveller seeks: shelter, rest, a place to pause. One of our small embroideries is dedicated to this idea — it includes the text: “As I was resting in the shadow of my grandmother’s tree.”

Women plant trees, and the shade they create becomes a place of rest for future generations — and this continuous passing on is at the very heart of our project.

— I also noticed an incredible piece featuring lots of video frames with women’s hands at work. Can you tell us more about that?

Diana: Right from the beginning, we decided not to take the classic anthropological route — we didn’t want to simply record interviews or document stories in a straightforward way. Instead, we chose to retell the women’s stories through gestures, through the process of making, through collaboration and interaction, and through a genuine sense of connection.

We were also exploring how different mediums remember. Photography, in our project, captures memory in a fragmentary, fleeting, and sometimes manipulative way.

Textile, by contrast, absorbs memory differently: it holds gestures, scents, and time. It is a slower, more intimate process — the fabric quite literally carries traces of those who touched it.

With video, we wanted to capture these very gestures and movements — the hands of the women we met. Many of them didn’t speak English, and often we didn’t have a translator, so much of the communication happened through facial expressions, glances, movements, and processes of making something together. We were outsiders, approaching with respectful curiosity, bringing this “canvas” with us, and becoming part of the retelling of traditions ourselves.

For us, it was important not just to “record facts” but to actually become participants in the transmission of memory — to observe how memories and traditions are passed on, preserved, and mixed across time. In a sense, we ourselves became heirs to this memory, taking part in the process.

When we spoke with women about their crafts, it was clear that for them, craft is a way to maintain a connection to the past, to the land, to family — it is a way of resisting the flow of time. In the video, there are fragments where you only see hands of women doing crafts, and Masha’s hands as she embroiders on the way, or the moment when one of the women touches the work, tries on our piece as a face-covering garment.

— These women, whose stories you are telling — even through videos of their hands — are used to being in the shadows, right? How did they react when you approached them and started filming?

Maria: I felt that the women genuinely wanted to share their stories. People have a deep need to be heard, and the women we met often seemed happy to be listened to. Take Nora from Jazan, for example — we didn’t speak Arabic, but she did everything she could to share her life experience, telling us about her education and recalling moments from her past. I believe it is something universal — we all want to be heard. Our work is about creating space for voices.

As for the filming, that is a story in itself. We were very aware that, in many cases, you are not allowed to photograph faces, and that is actually one reason why our project focuses so much on hands. These are stories passed on through movement, through touch, through gestures — not through direct narration. We even have a phrase for it: not “mouth-to-mouth,” but “hands-to-hands” — stories transmitted not in words, but through hands.

And again, when we stayed at Nora’s in Jizan for several days — our communication was mostly nonverbal, built through gestures, food, care, touch, and songs. This was how she shared her life story with us.

Diana: Shooting wasn’t easy, and the seasonal heat made things even more challenging. But hands turned out to be almost the only part we were allowed to photograph. For many women, their hands are the only part they feel comfortable exposing to the camera.

Another interesting thing we noticed: many women don’t have a photographic record of their childhood at all. In the 1980s, under the influence of a dominant social narrative, parents often destroyed or threw away childhood photos — it was considered against religion. So, many women simply don’t have a visual memory of themselves as children, no family photo archive with faces.

Even today, many still don’t want to be photographed, so in our project, we made a conscious choice not to show faces — instead, we focused on silhouettes, gestures, and fragments. It is less about direct documentation and more like imprints of memory.

— I also see some blue works, and there are letters or notes next to them — some in Arabic, some with flowers. What are these letters? What is this part of the exhibition about?

Diana: That is our research, and the residency itself is very process-oriented, so we are showing not just the final results, but the journey itself.

These are “evidence” — artefacts we gathered along the way: dried plants from gardens, handwritten notes, scraps of paper. For example, that little piece of paper you mentioned is from Jazan, and it comes with a beautiful story about the transmission of tradition.

We spent a few days living with a woman named Nora — she has a real “museum house” up in the mountains of her village. She took us in, fed us, and for a few days, we truly became part of the family.

One day, Nora’s mother came to visit. She started weaving with palm leaves and singing a traditional song. You could see how meaningful it was for Nora — she began to hum along, picking up the melody, even though she didn’t know the whole song. We asked her mother to write down the chant, but she had never been to school and couldn’t write — so she sang, and her daughter wrote down the lyrics as she listened. That is how this text appeared. Together, they sang three or four traditional chants in their local dialect. By the way, even people from Riyadh can’t always read these songs — the dialect is so different. One chant is about herding goats, another about weddings and dresses, and there is one simply about love.

In Jazan, there is a beautiful tradition: women make garlands from aromatic plants for protection and beauty. We saw a woman arrive with a jasmine wreath, and during the evening she began handing out the flowers to the guests — it was such a lovely gesture. We brought one of these wreaths back, and it is displayed on the table.

The blue pieces are cyanotypes we made in gardens and on farms. On them, you will find three embroideries: one in Russian, one in English, and one in Arabic. These are our reflections on the process, our search for poetry and meaning.

— I would love to hear more stories of the women you met. You have already shared Nora’s story, but I am sure there are others, and I imagine these women inspired you in different ways. Maybe there is a particular phrase or moment that has stayed with you?

Diana: I want to tell you about Faizah — an incredible woman from AlUla. She is truly one of the most radiant, inspiring people I have ever met, with such a remarkable energy. We first met her while she was weaving with palm branches. That day, she told us the story of her life, almost like a ballad, singing as she recounted where she was born and how her childhood unfolded on the farms.

In AlUla, there is a small town where everyone lives in the winter, but during the summer, families move to farms nearby because there are no air conditioners, and the only relief from the heat is the shade of the palm trees. For Faiza, the palm tree is everything — a symbol of strength, protection, shelter, and a place where you can always find coolness, even in the hottest weather. She sees herself in these trees.

Maria: Faizah reminisced about playing under the palms as a child, spending entire days in their shade, how everyone lived together, and how there were hardly any walls between houses — real, strong neighbourhood ties. She spoke about this sense of community, about everyone going to the farms together, helping one another, and truly living “as one big family.” There was so much warmth and nostalgia in her stories — I could almost feel what it was like to be part of her childhood, just for a moment.

Diana: Faizah shared absolutely everything with us — her struggles, her highs and lows, the loss of a child… It all felt so raw, so real, a whole life story laid open before us.

Later in life, Faizah returned to AlUla — to the very place where her family’s farms once stood. Now, most of it is in ruins, with only the remains of old houses left, but the trees are still growing among them. Faizah told us how one day she came back and saw the palms:

“They are still standing tall, they are still there, and we are still standing, we are still here.”

That phrase was incredibly powerful. She saw herself in those palm trees, in their ability to endure no matter what, just to exist, to stand firm, to give shade, to share themselves so generously. For her, the palms became a symbol of resilience, generosity, and inner strength.

Her story inspired us to create a whole series of works. We made silk prints using the silkscreen technique — each piece has two layers, which creates a kind of ghostly, almost ethereal effect, as if the landscape itself had several layers of time. These were images of the farms, the ruins, places of memory, where the trees continue to grow among the remnants. Masha added embroidery, as if we were rebuilding the landscape, creating a new layer of memory.

Photography is always a kind of manipulation, but I wanted to capture the feeling of these spaces — their atmosphere, their “slices of time.” This was probably one of the most moving places for me, especially after hearing all those stories and immersing ourselves in the world of AlUla. We found ourselves on this empty farm, surrounded only by trees and the ruins of twenty houses. The city changes quickly, life moves at its own pace here, but the farms and the trees remain, continuing to fill this place with memory and meaning.

Maria: For me, the most touching moment was everything connected to Raghat’s story, especially the day she and her mother took us to her grandmother’s garden. I actually wrote to Raghat afterwards, telling her it was almost a cathartic experience for me. I have my own childhood home with a garden at my grandparents’ — my grandfather planted trees, my grandmother tended to the garden, and some of those trees are still standing. My grandmother also suffered from dementia, so everything Raghat shared resonated with me on a deeply personal level.

Her family is remarkable for its strong independent women. She spoke about four generations of women in her family: from her grandmother to her young daughter, and how they support and help each other. All of this felt incredibly close and meaningful for me.

Then they brought us into that garden, Raghat told us how she used to swing under the mango tree as a child. I immediately remembered swinging or climbing the cherry tree my grandfather planted. It was such a universal and intimate experience, and I was once again struck by how stories, no matter how different their cultural backgrounds, can resonate so deeply with our own lives. There is real power in these connections and memories.

Raghat and her mother in AlUla in front of the mother’s old house

Raghat shared that her grandmother no longer remembers, but she remembers for her. And when we asked what the strongest memory was, she said it was how her grandmother applied henna on her palms and held her small hands in hers.

That moment stayed with me as a quiet, profound reminder of continuity — of how memory, touch, and gestures are passed down to the next generation.

Another powerful moment was at Nora’s place, when she took us to visit a friend who had a small home museum. There, I was invited to take part in a traditional gesture of applying henna on my palms — and it immediately brought to mind my own grandmother, how much of my memory is tied to her hands: her touch, her movements, her warmth. Even when I think about my mother, it is her hands I remember first.

In fact, the entire project for me is deeply rooted in gestures and hands. It is such a personal subject — my grandmother always used to show me her hands and say: “Look how much they have been through, how much they’ve lived.” That sense of touch, the transmission of gesture and memory across generations, is the greatest treasure for me — a universe, a true moment of connection.

— What is next for this exhibition? Will it travel?

Maria: Absolutely — for us, this is really just the beginning. And I don’t just mean that these works will travel and be shown elsewhere (though we definitely hope they will). We genuinely want to keep developing this project, to continue growing it. It would be wonderful to return to Saudi Arabia one day and keep working there, if the opportunity arises.

We are already planning to exhibit the works in Switzerland — those plans are in motion. But above all, we feel like this is just the start. We want to keep going, keep experimenting, rather than simply drawing a line and saying, “There, it’s finished.” For us, this project is very much alive.

by Alexandra Mansilla