Zahrah Al-Ghamdi ​

Zahrah grew up in the Southwestern region of Saudi Arabia. She then moved to Jeddah where she completed her undergraduate’s degree in Islamic Arts from King Abdulaziz University. She holds a Master’s Degree specializing in Contemporary Craft from Coventry University in England, where she also obtained her P.H.D in Design and Visual Art. She is now a faculty member of the Art and design Department at Jeddah University. Growing up Southwestern region of Saudi Arabia, and surrounded by traditional Aseeri architecture has played an integral role in her practice.

Saudi artist Zahrah Al-Ghamdi’s work explores memory and the past in traditional architecture. These spatial installations evoke the remnants of a past ethos: echoing histories in both medium and assemblage. The laborious meticulous process in which she assembles particles of Earth, clay, rocks, leather, and water into primarily site-specific work is a poetic gesture by the artist. Both medium and the process of “creating “draw on the notion of ‘embodied memory’ to translate and delineate on themes of culture, identity memory and loss.