What do the leather barnacle-like elements climbing on the fabric covered columns and spreading through Zahrah Al-Ghamdi's installation "After Illusion" stand for? Are they living organisms reminiscent of sea urchins or maybe eggs left behind by an alien parasite? These are maybe some of the questions visitors entering Al-Ghamdi's installation at the Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 58th International Art Exhibition, in Venice, may wonder.
"After Illusion" is indeed an immersive environment, a vast landscape filled with 50,000 handmade cotton-filled leather pieces, each of them handmade through a time-consuming process involving cutting, stuffing, sewing, shredding, boiling, drying and burning leather.
Zahrah Al-Ghamdi is known for her site-specific installations that are assembled using natural materials such as sand, rocks and leather, but this is her first monumental work.
Born in 1977 in the village of al-Asalah, Saudi Arabia, Zahrah Al-Ghamdi graduated from King Abdulaziz University, then moved to the UK where she pursued an MA in Contemporary Craft and a PhD in Design and Visual Arts from Coventry University.
Al-Ghamdi now lives and works in Jeddah where she teaches at the local university and where she develops her work that often focuses on the memory of traditional architectures from south western Saudi Arabia. Besides, the artist uses her work to present to the world a more positive and optimistic future for her country, while rejecting through her practice negative stereotypes regarding Saudi women.
Growing up in the south western region of Saudi Arabia, surrounded by traditional Aseeri architecture, played an integral role in her practice. Al-Ghamdi's favours indeed the use of natural materials such as soil, to pay homage to time and memory, nostalgia and historical architectural traditions.
In her mural "Labyrinth and Time" (2017) Al-Ghamdi used for example sand, cotton and water to recreate elements of Southern Saudi Arabian architecture. The final result called to mind the old-style of building houses in the south, with mud and water.
In "Inanimate Village" (2017) the artist arranged instead linear piles of sand mixed with dirt and small objects found in her birthplace on the ground to recreate the foundations of a building, hinting at abandoned or destroyed architectures in old Saudi villages evoking in this way feelings of melancholy and sorrow.
The installation "After Illusion" has a precise starting point: the title is inspired by a line from an ancient Arabic poem written by Zuhayr bin Abī Sūlmā (520-609), in which he described his struggle to recognise his home after being away for twenty years. Illusion came to his rescue, facilitating knowledge and helping the eighty-year-old poet recognising his home.
Al-Ghamdi's installation revolves around a series of dichotomies – past Vs present, traditions Vs future, handmade Vs machine made.
The immersive, mysterious and imaginary landscape the artist created for the Biennale is designed to engaged the senses: lights stimulate the sight; leather invites visitors to touch the pieces; the sweet scent of burnt leather reawakens the sense of smell, while hearing is activated when visitors touch the leather spheres attached to the fabric columns inside the pavilion and hear audio recordings of the artist preparing her work (there is also a video in the pavilion that shows how the leather spheres in the installation are made).
Through the installation Al-Ghamdi demontrates also her level of craftsmanship: this is not the first time the artist employs these leather spheres in her work. The elements had indeed already appeared in another (smaller) installation entitled "Mycelium Running", but this is the first installation in which Al-Ghamdi expressly invites visitors to interact with her work, and create connections with her own past.
Leather, a material that the artists considers as close to earth because of its natural colour, has indeed a special meaning for Al-Ghamdi since it represents a connection with her past and her childhood memories of the time when she accompanied her grandfather to herd his sheep.
Last but not least, leather also hints at human transformation: the material ages and hardens with time just like human beings. We do indeed change in accordance with the experiences we go through that make us stronger and help us facing different challenges and obstacles.
Beauty is not just in the installation as a whole, but also in the crafting process behind the entire installation, something that will probably lead the artist to collaborate one day with fashion houses renowned for their masterful knowledge of leather (Bottega Veneta? Loewe? Bets are open…).
