Until 30 September 2023, the ATHR gallery (Al-Jadida, AlUla) is holding Returning to a Present, a group exhibition curated by Pharah Al-Ghalib. It displays works created by six Saudi artists: Sarah Abu Abdullah, Ahaad Alamoudi, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Sultan bin Fahad, Ibrahim Romman, and Muhannad Shono.
In their exhibited art pieces, which include video works, photographs, paintings, and installations, the artists delve into the interplay between tradition and transformation and the collective and the individual in today’s Saudi Arabia (KSA). Exploring the relationship between local and foreign influences, their artworks portray the various social and aesthetic environments that shape KSA.
About the participants
Sarah Abu Abdullah (b. 1990, Qatif, KSA) is a multidisciplinary artist who resides in Riyadh, KSA. Initially trained as a painter, apart from painting, her art practice involves video, installations, performance, and poetry. In her work, she references gender roles and the female experience while investigating the social and cultural conditions of her home country. Abu Abdullah challenges the impossible by bringing together improbable elements and connections as a gesture of hope and an outlet for new narratives. The sources of her inspiration include constantly changing surroundings between her travels and her home in Saudi Arabia; the Internet; the pop culture in the Gulf region; and others.
Having grown up between Saudi Arabia and England, multidisciplinary artist Ahaad Alamoudi (b. 1991, Jeddah, KSA) lives and works between Jeddah and London. Her art-making practice engages photography, video, and print installations. The key themes she focuses on in her practice are Saudi Arabia’s history and representation. Travelling between the two countries, the artist also examines how communities promote heritage through archiving and how different historical narratives weave throughout families and communities. Alamoudi’s work based on research about KSA’s reforming ethnography is mostly presented in the form of commentary and parody.
Ayman Yossri Daydban (b. 1966, Palestine) is a prominent visual artist residing in Jeddah. Within his body of work, one can find paintings, photographs, and prints. With his last name translating into English as “watchman/guard”, he does observe the spectator and his surroundings and simultaneously remains independent. In his art, Daydban addresses such subjects as identity, the social collective memory, existence, belonging, and alienation.
For Sultan bin Fahad (b. 1971, Riyadh), a New York-based artist, art is “a journey between intangible memories and tangible cultures.” The main theme to which his artworks (drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations) are dedicated is material culture in his native country. In his work, bin Fahad reimagines found objects (flasks, prayer mats, chandeliers, etc.), and explores expressions of Islam and Saudi identity and history.
Muhannad Shono (b. 1977, Riyadh), who lives and works in his hometown, produces a full range of artworks characterised by a black-and-white palette: from large-scale sculptures and robotic installations to drawings. His art, which draws from his family history marked by several generations of forced migration, reflects on universal ideas (learning, creativity, and human nature) in place of specific cultural or geographic references. A lot of Shono’s art pieces revolve around the “line”. It is not only present in his installations as a horizontal element but also serves as a conceptual framework in which the idea of development (whether of a nation’s modernisation or an artist’s practice) is the most important metaphor.
To learn more about Returning to a Present, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in looking through twelve historical photo albums launched by the Akkasah photo archive.
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