Collector Spotlight: Mona Khashoggi
Passing from one room of arts parton Mona Khashoggi’s London home to the next is to trace the influence of centuries of Middle Eastern craftsmanship on contemporary art. An embroidered silk Ottoman robe hangs above a velvet couch arranged with heavily-embroidered pillows, while a show-stopping painting of an Ottoman dress by a contemporary artist overlooks the stairwell. Khashoggi is of Turkish descent, was born in Saudi Arabia, and has spent much of her life shuttling between London, Dubai, Gstaad, and the rest of the world in search art and significant emerging artists.
In the living room hangs an antique Ottoman costume that Khashoggi bought at auction and had restored.
“Growing up, we had antique furniture, 16th- and 17th-century art by European artists (but I can’t remember who),” Khashoggi tells Paddle8. “My two older sisters are artists who have exhibited in the Middle East and Europe. My family took us to Florence, Venice, Paris, and London to visit museums and appreciate architecture. I grew up looking at art and developing my own eye.”
Monographs and catalogs on a Lebanese cocktail table engraved with mother of pearl in the living room. Khashoggi served as the Middle East Ambassador to Photo London.
Antiques featured in Khashoggi’s collection when she began collecting on her own. “I started to buy antique furniture and silver, Impressionist art, and some young English artists,” she says. “But one of the most memorable works was a mosaic I bought 20 years ago from the Vatican vaults that some masters from the Michelangelo school sell. These masters are the only artists who are allowed to restore the mosaic works in the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican as a whole.”
Today, Khashoggi is a passionate supporter of emerging contemporary artists, connecting artists to galleries and sponsoring their practices when possible. She’s also served as the Middle East Ambassador to London’s Art14 Fair and Photo London (“I love Photo London, love the photography crowd. I find myself buying more and more photography. It’s a profession I wish I studied and pursued”). Honoring her roots, Khashoggi co-founded Mansoojat, a UK-based charity that preserves and restores traditional Arabian costume.
A Kezban Batibecki photograph in the kitchen.
Khashoggi and her friends in Jeddah were compelled to start Mansoojat after organizing a fashion presentation of Saudi costume for visitors from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian in D.C. While going through each other’s collections, Khashoggi says she was spellbound by antique clothing owned by a friend’s grandmother. “A group of us started to study the embroidery and stitching techniques [in the costumes], and thus started to collect,” she says. “We started [Mansoojat] with 20 pieces; now we have over 800. We are the first online museum of traditional Saudi costumes, we hold lectures, and exhibit at places like the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum.”
Her fascination with traditional costume spills over into her personal collection as well. Of the ivory Ottoman dress, she says, “I found it at an auction, thrown in a corner, badly displayed on a poor hanger. I sent it to a specialist to clean it and restore it, frame it in an ultra-violet pexiglass frame. I decorated the flat around this piece and the painting of the red Ottoman dress.”
Source: paddle8.com