Still Life and Plastic Dreams: Solo Exhibition by Mohammad Alfaraj

Still Life and Plastic Dreams

Mohammad Alfaraj

STILL LIFE & PLASTIC DREAMS

Still Life and Plastic Dreams

Mohammad Alfaraj

Curated by Mayssa Fattouh

29th January — 18th April

Still Life and Plastic Dreams

Text by Mayssa Fattouh

Mohammad Alfaraj, was born and raised in Al Hassa, Saudi Arabia, in 1993, in a quiet town that played a central role in the artist’s interest in nature and ecology, leading him from mechanical engineering to a multidimensional practice of video, photography, installations and writing and in which he presents a world in an impending collapse with a glitter of hope.

For his first solo show, Still life and Plastic Dreams, Alfaraj created a somber metaphor on the state of ecology and the impact of global economy on his hometown and the world. The title evokes something of a premature stillness whipsawed by overscaled dreams drawn from the era of modernity, where nature was perceived as something external to humans. As a response to this deepening rift, the exhibition presents the visitor with a body of work that explores the co-habitation of humans in a natural habitat and reminds us that we are all part of the same single organism.

The Sound of Thirst, 2020, 6 channels sound Installation on loop

In the form of a surrounding voice, the sound of water drops overlaps with that of its flow where the words of children happily singing about rain, surrounded by voices echo from the villages and palm trees of Al Ahsa, Alfaraj’s hometown. Poems mourning those who died thirsty, grieving and fearing thirst. Another reminder of the alarming situation the world is headed towards in regards to its water wealth.

The entanglement shows local self-contained agricultural practices confronted with mass extraction and extinction by the hyper-industrialized era, radically disrupting and exhasparating the feeling of a precarious present. With this in mind, Alfaraj questions the bifurcation that led to the ongoing civilizational paradigm shift we are partaking in, with the backdrop of weather and climate threatening our very existence, from daily life in a rural setting to apocalyptic visions of the future, where the capitalist machine is the axiomatic usurper of nature. Here, Alfaraj’s implication in these debates culminates in the instinctive act of storytelling in a sensorial installation across a selection of works, comprising of a commissioned sculptural installation, photography and photomontage, sketches, a site-specific sound installation and two projections.

Entering the exhibition space, the visitor is received with layers of sounds recorded by the artist, facing a hulking black and white image, presenting a modified Saudi desert landscape, which in the pre-climate crisis era would have been hailed as a sign of prosperity, now seen as a monument of uncontested destruction. Camels take the appearance of detritus, creating a sense of latent violence of the camera documenting the proliferation of the depradation of natural safe spaces. Opposite,

In a sharp, magnified and minimized manner all at once, the photograph shows a scene in the eastern province next to the industrial areas, reflecting a contradiction in both the form and the elements. The scenery shows a defining moment where industrial development and its effects meet the wilderness of the world in an area spanning from the desert to the city, from grazing and listening to the sound of water in search of it to digging deeply into the land in search of the black oil. This contradiction, with all the tensions it causes, is a wake-up call to draw our attention to the impact we have on nature.

Untitled , 2020, Photographic Image printed on wallpaper and cotton paper.

stands in a corner as a solitary witness, a single school desk with a section of a rice crop from the final rice production in his hometown, a production that has come to an end due to water scarcity. Besides it a notebook in the form of a diary, poems and sketches by the artist, which he composed at his hometown, in an act of resistance and hope facing the overwhelming gloominess that echoes the world around.

Umm Al-Saaf and Al-Leef 2020, Still Life and Plastic Dreams, Palm tree installation

The central installation Still Life and Plastic Dreams, that gives the exhibition its title, is Alfaraj’s first exploration in sculpture, and was especially conceived for this exhibition. Dismantled palm trees lay on the ground resembling archaic symbols of times when humankind belonged to a natural environmen. A large projection fills the back of the space, with an allegorical video representing life. The single channel video projection The Olive Tree Dancing in The Wind is visualized as an hymn of humankind as an intrinsic part of the nature. A woman sets out to dance a visceral choreography with a living tree and produces bare sounds of metal from rusty machines, bringing back the ongoing clash between the manmade or technology and the natural elements. The video was conceived in collaboration with fellow artist Sarah Ibrahim, and developed during Alfaraj’s recent residency at Can Serrat in the rural outskirts of Barcelona. Another work that informs the title is the photograph of a rice crop under a plastic bag. The plant glows in a romantic aura leaving the viewer pondering on the function of the surrounding unnatural material in which it is enclosed, sharply contrasting with its surrounding context.

As a continuation of the growing threat on rural areas and ancestral agricultural methods, the

These artworks are experiments of the visual work related to nature and our connection with it. They are extensions of photographs, movies, as well as aesthetic shapes that, so far, belong to an imaginary story where trees resemble other shapes and creatures all while remaining a unit that could constitute a playground for kids or even housing in the midst of nature. There is a feeling of fusion between this natural element and its intruder, be it plastic, agricultural diseases or fires, that seem to be growing on the skin of nature and the environment. This will later extend and evolve till it becomes a subject of concern for the artist at a later stage.

Umm Al-Saaf and Al-Leef 2020، Still Life and Plastic Dreams, Palm tree installation

The Olive Tree Dancing in The Wind 2019, Video, 7min

In collaboration with Sara Ebrahim

The work is a collaboration between the artist Sara Ibrahim, it reflects their experience in improvisation inspired by the fields of olive trees and the neglected brick factories around the village of “El Brook”, in a situation where the body dances like a tree to the rhythm of scrap, bricks and dissolving rusted metal.

The Olive Tree Dancing in The Wind

In collaboration with Sara Ebrahim

2019, Video, 7min

A situation in which the thin line between documentary and narrative disappears and fades away. This film attempts to capture the moment that flows from the cracks of time, in audio and video, as a link that ignites perception, which will hopefully make us feel closer and more empathetic towards everything that surrounds us, towards ourselves and towards others, whether they are very different or very similar to us. A film that searches for that supernatural and emerging soul, mixed with the components of the world’s natural mosaic. The human being is like the river girl and the son of the desert; the tree is like our first mother.

Ghost of the Fallah, 2020, Video, 3’50‘’

adjacent video projection Ghost of the Fallah is a poetic visual essay on the slow-paced life of the last remaining farmers wholeheartedly cultivating the last remaining usable plots in the artist’s hometown, once home for the largest water oasis and oil fields in Saudi.

A selection of photographs composed as photomontages of rural and urban landscapes, human figures and abstract forms, play on blurring the distinction between fiction and reality, between wakefulness and sleep, ignorance and knowledge… situating the viewer in the position of carefully questioning the narrative we contribute to in our daily life facing existential matters.

Alfaraj places the role of human agency in climate change and the effects of neoliberalism and hyper consumerism in a moment of reformulation, presumably leading to an acceleration of the erasure of hope and a rapid change of our very understanding of what we are, collapsing the boundaries between subjects and objects, between man and its environment. Ultimately, from whatever angle one may approach the topic, Alfaraj insists on the attention and commitment of the viewer as an urgent call to action in times of growing political and environmental crises and globalization, with art as a space of engagement and consciousness.

Mohammad Alfaraj

Mohammad Alfaraj’s (b. 1993 in Al Hassa, KSA, where he lives and works), practice centers around his exploration of the relationship between forms and concepts, is visible through superimposed stories in his photographic collages, regrouping and contrasting fiction and non-fiction subjects. Alfaraj’s work also often uses natural materials found in his hometown and combines them with children games and stories from people working the land, as an attempt to create states of co-existence between man and nature with an undertone of hope. A socio-environment activist at heart, his short documentary Lost, 2015 (which was awarded first place in the student category at the Saudi Film Festival), captures the latent state of the notion of temporality for the stateless Arabs living as refugees in their place of birth, and the dehumanizing effect this plays. This “un-homely” context portrays the poisonous beauty of nature when lived as a nemesis under political paralysis.

Alfaraj graduated with a BA in mechanical engineering from KFUPM in 2017. His work has been shown at the Sharjah Art Foundation; Le Murate Pac, Florence (2019); Athr Gallery, Jeddah (2018); 21,39 Jeddah Arts (2017, 2019); Saudi Film Festival, Dammam (2015) and Dubai International Film Festival (2014). Alfaraj worked as a programmer in both the Saudi Film Festival and the poetry house festival in Dammam.

His work is in the collection of the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Mayssa Fattouh

Mayssa Fattouh is a curator and cultural practitioner based in Barcelona, interested in intersections of art and knowledge production as means of sharing, communicating and hosting work by artists in various settings. She filled positions such as Artistic Director of Katara Art Center in Doha and Curatorial and Program Manager of Al Riwaq Art Space in Manama. In 2019 she developed a residency program for La Place Art Space in Barcelona as well as Interpose cycle of sound practices and language dedicated to the exploration of the notion of digression as a crucial mode of creative thinking and production. She was guest curator in 2018 at Casa Arabe Madrid with artist Sadik Alfraji and at Letitia Gallery in Beirut in 2019 for the solo show of artist Sirine Fattouh.

Throughout her practice, Fattouh was guest speaker and participant in programs and projects at leading institutions in the Middle East and elsewhere such as Mathaf (Doha), Tate Modern (London), Tamayo Museum (Mexico), Villa Empain (Brussels), Stroom (TheHague.)

Fattouh’s writings appeared in numerous artists monographs and publishing platforms such as Filip Magazine, Ibraaz, Universes in Universe, Canvas Magazine and is the co-founder of the temporary public art platform TandemWorks as well as member of the experimental online journal continent.cc.

Athr Gallery

Since its inception in Jeddah in 2009, Athr Gallery has played a pivotal role in building the Contemporary art scene in Saudi; valuing experimentation and the exploration of new ideas, disseminating the artists’ role in the creative process and the impact they can have on societies.

As a relentless supporter of young as well as established artists from Saudi Arabia and the Arab region, Athr has been providing a number of opportunities for furthering knowledge and experience within its multidisciplinary space in Jeddah and beyond, such as international residencies, special commissions, international group exhibitions, symposia, funding and more.

Founded by Hamza Serafi and Mohammed

Hafiz, whose passion and network allow Athr to have a deeply engaged discourse in the local art scene, they have taken on the initiative of filling the absence of public art institutions, museums and art schools to establish a sustainable art scene open to the world all while having an international presence.