While drawing deeply from her Saudi heritage, Ahmad engages with the shifting currents of difference and belonging within the immediacy of a felt moment, imbuing her work with an openness to interpretation. In the artist’s portraits of place, movement and colour register an increasingly symbolic and unfixed topography, reflecting an artistic practice developed in a cross-cultural milieu. Having studied Digital Culture at King’s College London prior to her master’s at the Royal College of Art, Ahmad’s paintings articulate a possible spectrum of environmental, temporal and embodied affect, responsive to her changing surroundings. In several works, the heightened colour and flattened perspectives characteristic of digital graphics are emulated, while others show evidence of the motifs and muted colour palettes found in urban landscapes or the microenvironment of her own studio.
Situated in the heart of the desert, Riyadh – the capital of Saudi Arabia, whose name denotes ‘oasis in the desert’ – provides the artist with rich visual and symbolic resonance. In her compositions, aggregated spaces of verdant colour contrast with more deliberate structural traceries rendered in pastel, charcoal and ink. Attuning her practice to the stark environmental dichotomies inherent to the city, Ahmad integrates oil painting with motifs and imagery specific to her cultural heritage, nurturing a dialogue between past and present – a space where traditional practices converge with creative innovation. Filigreed linear markings trace the vegetal patterns of indigenous flora, naturally segmenting the compositions into gestural and tonal zones where the interplay of light and shadow, combined with layered impasto, alludes to Riyadh’s diverse plant life, thriving despite its arid terrain.
Informed by both memory and lived experience, Ahmad aligns her practice with Bedouin temporalities, which eschew the conventional four-season meteorological model in favour of a more localised attunement to weather, vegetation and pasture, and their subtle variations. In her compositions, light and shadow oscillate and seasonal and diurnal cycles appear to merge into one, within which foregrounded areas of fertile growth yield to entropy and decomposition. Marked by a sense of fluidity and dissolution, as if envisioned through the haze of desert heat or dense rainfall, her abstract works evoke a sense of temporal disjunction.
Textiles and calligraphy – both esteemed and ancient art forms – serve as dynamic and culturally resonant mediums for the artist. Acknowledging the fluid elegance of Arabic script and its place within both the region’s contemporary and urban art landscapes, Ahmad harnesses these calligraphic attributes in the intricate mark-making of her more densely worked scenes. Her palette similarly ascribes to an exploration of evolving topographies, drawing inspiration from the vivid hues of traditional woven textiles – which conjure the warm, rich tones of the desert landscape – while also evoking the gradual encroachment of industrialisation on the environment through the muted shades of dry tan, beige and sandy hues.
Engaging with multiple layers of meaning, Ahmad’s paintings explore the nuanced relationship between cultural memory, artistic expression and the evolving physical and cultural landscapes that define a homeland. Recognising art’s unique capacity to bridge the divide between tradition and modernity, Ahmad draws upon deeply embedded cultural elements, while simultaneously responding to their varied manifestations in the contemporary milieu, with the aim of broadening the understanding of what is possible within fine art. A keen observer of her environment and an inheritor of the collective memory woven into its visual language, Ahmad’s vibrant compositions, in their apparent diversity, lend singular life to the entwined strands of temporality, spatiality and stimuli that comprise the eclectic and evolving tapestry of her home.
Alia Ahmad (b.1996) lives and works in Riyadh. Ahmad received a BA in Digital Culture from King’s College London in 2018 and a Master of Research in Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2024); Albion Jeune, London (2024); White Cube, Paris (2024); Massimo de Carlo, Paris (2023); Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2022); Hafez Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2022); and Gallery Bawa, Kuwait City (2021). Group exhibitions include NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2024); Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2024); White Cube (online) (2023); Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, California (2023); Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas (2023); CICA Vancouver, Canada (2023); Hayy Jameel, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2022); Fenaa Al Awwal, Riyadh (2022); 21,39, Jeddah Arts, Saudi Arabia (2021); and Design Museum, London (2020), among others.
