Johnny Depp
A leading Saudi contemporary artist,
Ahmed Mater is one of the most significant cultural voices documenting and scrutinising the realities of the Middle East. His work is being presented at Christie’s London headquarters in the exhibition Ahmed Mater: Chronicles (17 July - 22 Aug).
While Mater has exhibited in major solo and group exhibitions across the world, this mid-career retrospective will be a global first. As such, "it’s an immersive odyssey into the artist's visionary career," says curator Dr Ridha Moumni, Chairman at Christie’s Middle East and Africa. The event speaks to the cultural significance and skill behind his practice, which reckons with rapidly changing social and cultural landscapes across the Arab World.
Featuring more than 100 works spanning paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, video, and installation, the exhibition traces the debuts and milestones of his artistic career to date. It’s a celebration of his thematic focus on the human body, globalisation, Islamic artistic heritage and faith. Read on to discover more about the Mater’s groundbreaking masterpieces.
Inside the world of Ahmed Mater
“Art is one of the only things that allow us to look back and to see the future or to make us expect or think about the future. It's really philosophy," says Ahmed Mater. "Art connects us to story, to time, to feeling. Art is poetic also. It carries this poem from the past until today. This is very important – art is not inclusive anymore, art is part of society.”
With a background in medicine, Ahmed Mater is acutely attuned to the realities and social welfare of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Born in 1979 in the mountainous city of Abha (bordering Yemen), he witnessed the throes of the most seismic period in Saudi history – namely the Kingdom’s oil boom and the tensions between religion and power. Much of Mater’s work reflects the artist's complex relationship with and scope on Saudi's ever-changing political, social and geographical landscape. Research-led, personal and teeming with collective memories, it uncovers and records the Middle East's unofficial histories.
This has led him to pioneer transforming Saudi's cultural sector, and participate in some of the earliest contemporary art movements in the Kingdom, including Al-Meftaha Arts Village, the seminal Shatta (2004) and Mostly Visible (2013) exhibitions, his Jeddah-based Pharan Studio, and as co-founder of the Edge of Arabia collective. From 2017–18, for its inaugural year, he was the Founder Director of Misk Art Institute. His tenure included overseeing the first Saudi National Pavilion at the Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia.
Gas Station Leadlight, 2013 by Ahmed Mater. From the Desert of Pharan series
In 2016, Mater became the first Saudi artist to hold a solo exhibition in the United States with Symbolic Cities: The Work of Ahmed Mater at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC. He's also had several solo and group exhibitions at esteemed institutions and galleries such as Brooklyn Museum, New York (2019), King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia (2018); Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (2017); Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (2017), Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, London (2006), the British Museum, London (2006 and 2012), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2011), Institut du Monde Arab, Paris (2012) and Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2013), among many others.
“Ahmed Mater is an artist who's not afraid of dealing with very sensitive topics,” says Dr Moumni. “He's also not afraid of working with new media, he's not afraid of dealing with different projects. For me, the most interesting part of Ahmed Mater is his brain and capacity to think of a thing and mature ideas that he translates into artworks.”
Conceptual Crossroads
The Christie's exhibition highlights the major milestones of Mater's career, from his unseen early abstract paintings, to the celebrated Illumination series. There is one of Mater’s earliest works, My Village, painted when he was only 16, and a mural work by his mother. As well as pivotal works from the Desert of Pharan (2011—2013) project; where hundreds of photographs and films document the rapid development of Islam’s holiest city of Mecca. “I want people to feel my artwork’” says Mater. “For me, this poetic element is the last or at least the most difficult part of the artwork, when you get the poetic feeling.”
To know Mater’s work is to understand how it reflects the artist’s history of being poised at intersections. Growing up in Abha, his early years were geographically remote from the Kingdom’s dominant religious and administrative capitals. From his vantage point, he was exposed to the modernising world beyond the border.
Naturally, his work is full of contrasts that juxtapose traditionally opposing systems: past, present and future; tradition and innovation; heritage and globalisation; religion, faith, economic prowess and modernisation. This results in conceptual pieces underpinned by incisive action, and a desire to devise prognoses for a land of unprecedented religious, social, economic, and political influence. As expected, their psychological themes encourage the viewer to reflect on themselves, and Saudi's populace.
Ashab Al-Lal installation, 2024 by Ahmed Mater. From the Journey in Land Art project commissioned by Wadi AlFann
The artist’s site-specific project: Journey in Land Art (2024) takes centre stage at the exhibition. Commissioned by Wadi AlFann (meaning ‘Valley of the Arts’) AlUla, Mater joined artists Wadi AlFann, Manal AlDowayan, Agnes Denes, Michael Heizer, and James Turrell, in creating works for the AlUla, the extraordinary desert region of north-west Saudi Arabia steeped in thousands of years of natural, historical and cultural heritage.
They unveiled a preview of their individual works at the 60th International Venice Biennale. For his part, Mater took inspiration from AlUIa’s monumental landscape and fashioned circular crevice installation which is now a permanent fixture of the desert. Titled Ashab Al-Lal, his piece was influenced by the scientific and philosophical thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age. It explored the mythic space between subjective imagination and objective reality by generating a mirage within the sand dunes.
Ashab Al-Lal takes its name from a piece of Nabati poetry (popularly known as “the people’s poetry” or “Bedouin poetry”). Describing the Arabian desert, it refers to the mirage – always ephemeral, out of reach – as a guide and a reason to journey through the desert’s expanse. In 2016, Mater also created a series of images under the same name. Collaging archival images of Bedouins and workers, it documents the transformation of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia; from its establishment in 1932, through the oil boom of the 1970s and 1980s.
Al Malaz, 2016 by Ahmed Mater. From Ashab Al-Lal: Fault Mirage, A Thousand Lost Years
The series chronicles and collides historical moments including the city’s administrative metropolis, the intense production of the oil fields in the East and the obscured and fading stories of life before the petrodollar flooded the desert with cars, concrete buildings and the trappings of the West. These glimpses into the past represent significant moments from Saudi history and are layered with scenes of development and change – the monoliths of globalisation.
A poignant section of the exhibition is devoted to the Magnetism book (presented to the public for the first time), which draws inspiration from the Holy Qur’an and religious texts. Comprising crisp monochrome miniature diagrams, it evokes the intensity of Hajj: the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. This sacred religious journey sees millions of Muslims congregate around the Ka’aba (the House of Allah) each year. In his visuals, Mater exposes the tensions of faith and religion with iron filings that radiate around a black cube.
This moment of absolute equilibrium crystallises the faith-driven magnetic pull of the holy site. It alludes to the deeply spiritual force felt by millions who pray in its direction five times a day, as well as those who circle during Tawaf. Variations of the original Magnetism installation (2012) have been exhibited at prominent institutions worldwide such as the British Museum, Institut du Monde Arabe, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha and Brooklyn Museum.
Magnetism, 2012 by Ahmed Mater. From the Magnetism series. Courtesy of the artist and Christie's
Exhibition Highlights
More highlights from the exhibition include Boundary (2021), where Mater transforms the mihrab (the wall of a mosque that indicates qibla- the direction of prayer), into an airport security scanner. Crucially reflecting on the surveillance and security operations that have become part of daily life for Muslims.
Boundary, 2024 by Ahmed Mater © Ahmed Mater. Courtesy of the artist and Christie's
Talisman X-ray Blue (Torso) (2008) is another significant piece, and part of the artist’s celebrated Illumination series. Reconciling faith and science, it takes inspiration from human x-rays, as well as the Islamic arts, gold leaf, tea, pomegranate, coffee, and other materials traditionally used on the pages of Islamic manuscripts.
Talisman X Ray III, 2008 by Ahmed Mater
Meanwhile, Lightning Land (2017) bisects the scene of an oil field (on the left) and a Bedouin tent (on the right) with an enormous lightning bolt. Through this flash of force, the artist highlights the erratic and unpredictable tensions of land caught between past and future, tradition and innovation, heritage and globalisation. Faced with this powerful image, we consider their impact on Saudi’s individuals and society at large.
Lightning Land, 2017 by Ahmed Mater
Another iconic work featured in the exhibition is Evolution of Man (2010); a repetitive series of images featuring the morphing of a gas pump into a man, gun to his head. It comments on the rapid evolution of Saudi Arabia since its discovery of oil in 1938, which transformed the Kingdom’s economic, political, social, and religious landscape. It reflects on a foreboding prognosis - that of the risks to the environment, social fabric, and ultimate threat of cycles of destruction.
Evolution of Man, 2010 by Ahmed Mater. Courtesy of the artist and Christie's
When questioned about the landmark exhibition, Ahmed Mater replied: "It is a great honour to present my artistic journey at Christie’s historic headquarters in London this summer. It is especially poignant for me to exhibit in London, almost 20 years after the first presentation of my work outside Saudi Arabia at the British Museum in 2005. I have been witnessing Christie’s dedication over the years to promote art from the region and it is a distinction to be aligned in this respect, and build an educational and cross-cultural dialogue."
A conversation between Dr. Ahmed Mater and Dr. Ridha Moumni will take place at Christie’s as part of a three-day immersive course on the art from the Arab and Islamic worlds. You can find out more here.
