After Illusion

National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia, Sale D’Armi, Arsenale, La Biennale di Venezia

Celebrated land artist Zahrah Al-Ghamdi was selected to exhibit After Illusion, a site-specific installation using natural materials inspired by the artist’s sense of home, at the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia, Venice Biennale, 58th International Art Exhibition. After Illusion is heavily informed by the overall Biennale theme ‘May you live in interesting times’. ‘Interesting’ is a purposefully vague word, loaded with alternative meanings. In After Illusion Al-Ghamdi meditates on the value of uncertainty. Exploring the dichotomy between something new, but familiar, illusion and truth. Inviting us to free ourselves from the obligations that come from taking a definitive stance, opening new doors to self-awareness and transformation.

As Eiman Elgibreen, curator of the exhibition, says:

“Saudis have long been living in interesting times. Their complicated sociocultural history has forced them, and others, to be seen as interesting. There is a sense of lost cultural and historical agency due to the hegemony of global discourse. Their significance has been encapsulated within two narrow historical moments: the emergence of Islam and the discovery of oil, leaving them confused on how to perceive their history outside of those moments, particularly with the absence of visual evidence.”

The title After Illusion refers to a line from an ancient Arabic poem written by Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (b.520- d.609) in which the poet describes the struggle to recognise his home after being away for 20 years.Only illusion helps the eighty-year-old recognise it – a state of mind we think obscures the truth, but actually paves the way to it.

Curator Eiman Elgibreen goes on to say:

“To construct a conceivable space of turning fear into curiosity, to explore the unknown instead of fighting it, artist Zahrah Al-Ghamdi is the obvious choice. A strongly emerging contemporary artist, her unique experiment with focus on materiality challenges the dominant contemporary scene of Saudi art today.

The trajectory of her work has displayed her abilities to transform into new objects, elements she perceives as an embodiment of her old birthplace that have been mostly now turned into ruins. She would then use them to generate an equally exquisite and enigmatic space where one could relive and reimagine the home she knew, a space that is created anew in every iteration.”