On this week’s The Cultural Frontline Nawal Al-Mughafi explores how artists are responding to the landscape around them.

Saudi artist Dana Awartani tells us about her latest piece, Where the Dwellers Lay, part of Desert X AlUla, which has been inspired by the desert landscape of the AlUla region of north west Saudi Arabia. She also discusses the role of female artists on the flourishing art scene in country.

How we look at the landscape around us depends very much on our own relationship with it, whether it’s where generations of our family have taken root, or a place we intend to exploit. And that’s something explored by Zimbabwean author Blessing Musariri in her first adult novel, Only This Once Are We Immaculate. We invited fellow Zimbabwean author Ignatius Mabasa to talk to Blessing about her book. Although Blessing and Ignatius live in the capital Harare, but are both fascinated with the natural world beyond the cities.

Highlighting light pollution and preserving natural darkness is an important subject for conceptual artist Rafael Y. Herman. For his upcoming exhibition called ‘ESSE’ in Palermo, he’s been making his way around the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding archipelagos, carrying only essential supplies and a camera to capture the most stunning and isolated parts of the Italian region, showcasing its natural beauty without lights, flashes or post-production.

And we hear from the award-winning artist Miko Veldkamp. He was born in Suriname to parents of Dutch and Indonesian heritage and in his exhibition Ghost Stories, he explores his mixed race identity by putting varying versions of himself into paintings of the landscapes of his life, which features symbols from the different geographies in which he’s lived.

(Photo: Dana Awartani. Credit: Desert X AlUla)