Grantee Spotlight: Hend Al-Mansour

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MRAC’s Grantee Spotlight is a new series to showcase the impact of MRAC’s funding across communities.

Hend Al-Mansour

Disciplines: Screen Printing, Animation, Murals, Installation MRAC Grant Program: Next Step Fund, 2022

Headshot of Hend Al-Mansour
Image Description: A headshot of Hend Al-Mansour, a brown woman with grey short asymmetric hair cut. Smiling to the camera with a background of one of her screen-prints. Photo Credit: Megan Doll photography
Screen print by Hend with kaleidoscope like pattern
“She Thinks She Makes Art” – Screen Printing by Hend Al-Mansour. Image Description: The screen print has vibrant pink, gold, green, and purple colors and has kaleidoscope-like repeated patterns and imagery contained within a square boarder, including the circular repetition of a woman painting on to the image from within the border.

 

About This Grantee

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, Al-Mansour draws inspiration from Islamic art and Arabic aesthetics. Gender discrimination and social injustice shape her themes of highlighting women’s power and their equal participation in cultural production. Al-Mansour recently ventured into animation after two decades of making installation, screen-printing, and murals, often in combination. She employs stylized figures, Arabic calligraphy, and Islamic geometric design.

Her debut film, “I am a Line,” was funded by MRAC’s Next Step Fund, and premiered at New York’s AIR Gallery, followed by a screening at Franconia’s 5-minute Film Fest in Minnesota in 2023.

Al-Mansour holds a Master of Fine Arts and a Master of Art History from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of St. Thomas, respectively. Al-Mansour has received several awards, including MRAC and MSAB grants and the McKnight and Jerome Fellowships. She is a member of the Rosalux Gallery, the Interfaith Artists Circle in the Twin Cities, and The Habibitis, an artists’ group of multiethnic American women working to promote cultural diversity in the US.

A mural painted by Hend Al-Mansour on exterior wall
“Coming Home,” a mural painted by Hend in St Paul. Image Description: A mural painted on a building wall with a parking lot in the foreground. In the mural, two women of different ethnic backgrounds, a white woman in a pink dress and a brown woman in a yellow dress, face each other while looking into each other’s eye with a golden telescope. A blue and purple background illustrate their cultural differences, with Arabic words, a flock of birds, and geometric shapes in the brown woman’s background; she carries a suitcase. In the background of the white woman are two mounted heads of the statue of liberty, she also has a plush living room set and window in her background.

Impact Statement

“As an immigrant and an artist, I feel lucky to have landed in Minnesota as my new home. The art scene here is rich and flourishing with artist support organizations like MRAC, which recognize and promote creative energies. I have been a screen printer and installation artist for most of my career. A few years ago, I got interested in animation. It was an intimidating field, especially since I had no formal training or background in such a field.

Nevertheless, I decided to risk the adventure and learn and make animations. It was a turning point in my career, not to dismiss other media I had worked with for many years but to enrich it and add another dimension to my installation. Thanks to Next Step funding from MRAC, I have successfully made a short animation film. I exhibited it at A.I.R Gallery in New York, Franconia Film Fest, and Rosalux Gallery in Minneapolis. I am now making another animation that will be displayed within an installation piece at MIA this spring. MRAC funding helped me dedicate time to learning, take the necessary classes, and buy the software. Furthermore, it gave me an encouraging push and permission to pursue a new interest.”

– Hend Al-Mansour

Stay Connected

MRAC’s Grantee Spotlight is a new series to showcase the impact of MRAC’s funding across communities. MRAC’s Next Step Fund is made possible with generous support from the McKnight Foundation.

Stay connected with this month’s grantee: Hend Al-Mansour

Social Media
Instagram: @hendalmansour

Website
www.hendalmansour.com

Upcoming events
March 2024, installation exhibition “Contain Me” will be on display at MIA as part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program.

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