PARIS: Mohammad Al Faraj was born in Al-Ahsa, the world’s largest desert oasis in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. He is the son and grandson of a date farmer.
The 31-year-old artist is one of the participating artists in the 2021 AlUla Artist Residency and is currently presenting the results of that residency for the first time as part of Art Basel Paris’s international art exhibition ‘Orbis Tertius’. It’s on display. The fair opened on October 18th at the newly restored Grand Palais in Paris.
He describes himself as “an artist and a poet, a visual poet.”
“I was talking about this with one of the other artists in the AlUla residency, and we both talked about poems and poetry as objects, things that you can hold in your hands, touch, feel, smell. We agreed that we are trying to encapsulate it in a poem that can be done,” Alfaraj tells Arab News.
Still from Alfaraj’s “The Date Fruit of Knowledge.” (Included)
His path to becoming an artist was not simple. He studied Applied Mechanical Engineering at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Mineral Resources in Dhahran. “When I started my studies in 2011, there wasn’t a lot of focus on filmmaking or photography in Saudi Arabia, and those were the things that interested me. , it was beautiful because understanding how to build is a subject that is relevant to a curious mind. One of my favorite courses was Mechanics of Materials. I learned that even inanimate objects emit vibrations and energy. Not only did I want to get my degree, I also wanted to pursue a career as an artist,” he explains.
His agricultural background also influences his work.
“Growing up on a farm, it’s ingrained in me to reuse everything around me,” he says. “We don’t call it ecology. We call it resources. There is no waste, there is no surplus, nothing is thrown away. I call it “made with integrity.”
“The Last Words of a Tree 2” is currently on display at Art Basel Paris. (Included)
Birds are central to one of Al Faraj’s Art Basel installations, “The Fruits of Knowledge.” The stop-motion film with narration at the top was drawn on the sand of AlUla’s palm forest.
“This is the story of a little nightingale who tries to acquire all the knowledge of the world. He is impatient. He wants everything right away. Someone told him, “From each palm tree, the world The legend goes that it produces one date that contains all the knowledge of the world. There he finds a palm tree and eats all the dates the tree produces to fulfill that one date. He gets hooked and wants to stop, but he can’t. They are driven by a thirst for knowledge,” Alfaraj says.
“Finally, finally, he found the date! And he knows everything, now what happened and what will happen next. The problem is, when he knows everything, He knows everything – the good things he can’t enjoy, and the terrible things he can’t change – so this blessing becomes a curse. It’s about the idea of taking your time, taking things slow, and really experiencing the journey of life, rather than reaching for it. Of course, from Quranic stories, religious fables, folklore and myths from around the world. “Everyone can relate to it in some way because it’s inspired,” he added. “The Nightingale in the movie is made from dates, and he eats dates to the point of death. What I mean by this is that while our destruction may be of our own hands, our salvation may also be of our own hands. ”
Untitled 4, Mohammed Al Faraj, 2023. (Provided)
The film was shown at Art Basel against a backdrop of Alfaraj’s illustrations, with palm leaves in the shape of bird wings placed in front of the screen.
“The paper[for the illustrations]is made from palm waste, and the ink is also made from palm leaves, so the entire work is made from things that would normally be discarded,” Alfaraj explains. “I like finding things, collecting them and making them into sculptures, and finding photos and landscapes of places I’ve visited and making them into something new.I think it’s wonderful to find things, discover them, and change them. Masu.”
Alfaraj still lives in the place of his birth, which remains a constant source of inspiration. Last year he built a house on the farm there.
Installation shot of “Hand” from Mohamed Al Faraj’s “Fossils of Time” series. (Included)
“It’s a simple rectangle with a bedroom, a kitchen, and a studio where I work. There’s a garden with date palms, mulberry trees, fig and lemon trees. I also have some chickens now.”
When he travels abroad, he keeps his carbon footprint as low as possible, even if it means being away from home for months at a time.
Since the beginning of this year, he has been preparing for his next exhibition in Dubai, in parallel with Art Basel. He told the curator that he wanted to be known as an “anti-SS” artist.
Mohamed Alfaraj and his work “From What Bone Will We Grow Back On First Day of Eternity”. (Included)
“This is a play on words, which I always like. It means that I am anti-style and anti-scale, because style and scale are not the driving force behind the work, they are just the surface. The driving force behind the work must be heart and soul and humility and modesty. If large-scale construction is required, we are happy to do it, but there is no reason to make it an end in itself.”
Another of his Art Basel installations is from his “Last Words of a Tree” series and is titled “From What Bone Will We Grow Back On First Day of Eternity?”
“We used certain parts of palm trees to create sculptures that looked like bones or fossils of creatures that came out of the earth,” he says. “I believe that if so many sacrifices are made, something great will happen and hopefully the glory of humanity will emerge. Evil and prejudice have been eradicated. I hope it serves as a recognition of all that exists, but also contains some kind of hope.”
