Hawazin: Imagining the Male Gaze in Mascara

Drawing from the censored imagery of her girlhood and the cartoonish moral codes of the inherited Arab miseducation we know all too well, Hawazin Alotaibi uses beauty to unmask contradictions. Each piece feels like a mirror turned back on the systems that shape those of us raised in the region, reflecting what happens when control, gender, and culture quite literally start to blur.

The 32-year-old Saudi artist paints men from the Gulf surrounded by pink blooms and a soft pastel haze, recasting masculinity through the same aesthetic language used to police femininity. Her work is not a satirical take on the traditional Arab man, but a reclamation. It is a quiet, subversive commentary summarised in two affirmations: you can be soft, and I see you.

Because Alotaibi’s paintings often feature men enveloped in delicate hues and floral motifs, they evoke a sense of reminiscence of the faceless Gulf influencer aesthetic: perfect pastels, untouchable elegance, and exaggerated femininity. It is all rather saccharine. Her works, as a result, feel familiar yet strange, juxtaposing periwinkle and keffiyehs. In her hands, the aesthetic codes of girlhood – the censored faces, the roses, the ‘good girl’ language – become tools for critique. She paints paradoxes: strength in vulnerability, rebellion in beauty.

One of her series, Softboi (2021), evokes the ‘flower men’ of Saudi Arabia. A viral symbol of alternative masculinity in 2018 precisely because their floral crowns accomplish what Alotaibi sets out to communicate. Their beauty alone defied the stoic archetype of the Gulf man. Similarly, her work doesn’t attack masculinity; it unravels it softly, petal by petal.

When she started painting, she realised the power of fine art in turning fantasy into reflection. “It wasn’t just about creating new worlds, but understanding why we crave them, too,” she explains. That curiosity has since expanded into sound and curation of DJ sets, exhibitions, and projects that remix identity as much as they remix melodies. For Alotaibi, every creative outlet serves the same purpose: to build space where boundaries, in her view, ought to dissolve.

Her practice is fuelled by discovery and conversation. “Finding new music always sparks something for me,” she says. “So does talking with friends about star signs, reality shows, anything not necessarily art related—it’s all part of the process.” She stresses that she isn’t chasing controversy as much as contribution. “I just hope my work initiates questions, reflections, conversations we don’t usually get to have.”

Raised in Saudi Arabia, Alotaibi grew up having to build spaces of her own. “I didn’t have much access to art or music the way I wanted it, so I kind of built my own world around it,” she says. Anime, manga, and DIY graphic novels became her earliest portals to freedom, allowing her to imagine alternate pockets of reality that felt larger than what physically surrounded her. Those early sketches evolved into something more critical: a lifelong examination of how gender representation and culture intersect, often to our detriment.

Now based between London and Riyadh, she’s working on a new solo show while diving deeper into music production and curatorial collaborations. For Alotaibi, it’s all one continuum. Painting, sound, and culture are an ongoing project of reimagining what it means to see, to listen, and to belong. One intentional glance at her work, and it’s clear that it doesn’t shout. It seduces. It blurs. It blooms.