Sarah Abu Abdallah: Saudi Automobile (2011)

Overview

Through references to gender roles and the female experience, Sara Abu Abdallah's work explores issues of obscurity and value, probing the social and cultural conditions of life in contemporary Saudi Arabia. In her multidisciplinary practice, she creates associations of the poetic and the absurd.

Saudi Automobile consists of an installation and a 10-minute looped video that shows Sarah Abu Abdallah painting the shell of a wrecked car with light pink paint, mainly as a gesture of defiance against the monopolisation of the privilege of driving by the men in her home country at the time. She paints the wrecked car like icing a cake, as if beautifying the exterior would fix its disfunctionality. In this exhibition, Abu Abdullah’s pink car is placed outside on the Platform of The Flying Saucer.