Facebook Project – 2013 – 2018
Facebook 1–3 is a triptych of works that traces a narrative of attention, voice, and consequence in Saudi women's lives. Inspired by a niece's viral Facebook post that called for women to drive in protest, the series uses a monumental open notebook as a staging ground for a poem that unfolds across the images. Repeating the patterned motif of Saudi men's headgear, the prints place a single woman—clad in an abaya and facing the viewer—at the center of a shifting interior drama that moves from quiet inscription to exposure and rupture.
The first two works are 30 × 36 in screen prints that progress like chapters in a story. In Facebook 1, the protagonist sits on a Bedouin woven rug, turning toward a larger‑than‑life notebook in which she has written the opening lines of a poem. Inside the book, a slumped, mirror‑image figure looks down, suggesting an interior shadow or a past self. In Facebook 2, the woman stands beside the book, which now contains more lines; the figure within the page remains but is fainter and increasingly overwritten by text. Facebook 3 (2018) continues the sequence digitally: the book's second page turns, the slumped figure remains visible through the page's translucency, and the narrative reaches a violent, allegorical climax.
Across the series, the repeated pattern of men's headgear functions as both backdrop and social frame—an emblem of public structures that shape private lives. The poem embedded in the images serves as a counterpoint to the visual narrative, making the prints simultaneously intimate and civic: they concern personal memory, collective action, and the costs of visibility.
Across the series, the repeated pattern of men's headgear functions as both backdrop and social frame—an emblem of public structures that shape private lives. The poem embedded in the images serves as a counterpoint to the visual narrative, making the prints simultaneously intimate and civic: they concern personal memory, collective action, and the costs of visibility.