When Medicine & Art Meet ‘The Language of The Desert’: A Celebration of the Career of Ahmed Mater
A Fata Morgana is a mirage that appears when still air meets layers of warm or cold air above, refracting the light to create strange impressions in the sky. Sailors named the phenomenon after the malevolent sprite of Arthurian legend, Morgan le Fay, believing these pearlescent forms meant them harm. In the Arctic, a Fata Morgana can create the illusion of distant mountain ranges stretching across sea ice, disorientating travelers.
For those living in the desert, a glittering strip of silver on the horizon giving the illusion of water is not such an arresting sight. ‘For us it is a symbol of hope,’ says the Saudi artist Ahmed Mater. ‘It keeps us walking and walking, but it gets farther and farther away until the destination becomes the journey itself.’ He echoes the words of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote about his ‘desert-haunting visions’ in A Rhyme for the Odes: ‘I am the traveler and the road. Gods appear to me and disappear. We don’t linger upon what is to come.’
Ahmed Mater (b. 1979), Illuminations IV, 2022. Mixed media on paper. 102 x 152 cm. Courtesy of the Royal Commission for AlUla
This is the basis of Ashab Al-Lal, a vast installation by the 44-year-old artist, situated in the hot sands of Wadi AlFann, a 65-square-kilometre ‘valley of the arts’ in AlUla in the north-west of Saudi Arabia. Mater’s extraordinary design is set to become one of the world’s defining earthworks. Like Walter De Maria’s 1977 New Mexico installation, The Lightning Field, and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Utah, it defies belief: an otherworldly structure suggestive of ancient civilizations or an alien edifice.
This site-specific commission is featured in Christie’s exhibition Ahmed Mater: Chronicles, a world-first retrospective tracing the career of a man who started out in medicine and is now one of the leading artists in the Middle East. The exhibition features photographs, paintings, videos and sculptures, as well as the forthcoming Ashab Al-Lal at its center.
Ahmed Mater (b. 1979), Study II, 2022. Graphite on paper. 50 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the Royal Commission for AlUla
The sophisticated engineering project takes its place alongside new sculptures by pioneering land artists James Turrell, Agnes Denes and and Michael Heizer, together with a new commission by the Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan. The work is comprised of a giant oculus buried in Wadi AlFann. Visitors descend through a tunnel into a subterranean chamber, where a mirage will reflect their image above ground so that walkers in the desert will encounter their apparition. Conversely, ‘people inside will see the image of the people outside’, says Mater, who adds that he considers the mirage to be ‘the language of the desert’, a place of magic and illusion, mysteriously changing under different conditions.
Ahmed Mater (b. 1979), Illuminations I, 2022. Mixed media on paper. 152 x 102 cm. Courtesy of the Royal Commission for AlUla
Ahmed Mater (b. 1979), The Stage (plate), 2022. Waterjet Rosa Asigo marble, stainless steel mirror interior. 12.3 x 113 x 66.6 cm. Courtesy of the Royal Commission for AlUla
Inspiration for the artwork comes from a variety of sources, among them the astronomer Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040), who helped conceive of the camera obscura and identified three geometrics by which light reaches our eyes. Artists including Jan van Eyck used al-Haytham’s guidelines to create optical complexity in their paintings, bedazzling onlookers with tricks of perspective and illusionistic effects.
The Cenotaph for Newton, an unrealised design by the 18th-century French architect Etienne-Louis Boullée for ‘a true Earthly Paradise’ where day would become night and night day. Lithograph. Private Collection. Photo: UIG / Bridgeman Images
Another influence is the 18th-century French architect Etienne-Louis Boullée, who conceived of numerous fantastic structures but built few. One of his most audacious proposals was a 500ft-high spherical tomb for Isaac Newton, in which the conditions of the universe would be reversed. Day would become night, and night become day. ‘This beautiful place,’ he wrote, ‘would be the image of all that ensures our wellbeing; it would fill our hearts with a sense of joy and would be for us a true Earthly Paradise.’
According to Ridha Moumni, Chairman of Middle East and Africa at Christie’s, Boullée’s structure was designed to celebrate humanity’s place at the centre of the universe. Ashab Al-Lal, however, places the natural and spiritual world at its core. ‘The work ties into a central idea in Mater’s artistic thought, that of the ephemeral nature of human life,’ he says.
Ashab Al-Lal is located in the sands of Wadi AlFann, a 65-square-kilometre ‘valley of the arts’ in the north-west of Saudi Arabia. Courtesy of Ahmed Mater
Mater’s experience as a doctor continues to influence his work, which often addresses the fragility of existence and the presence of God. In his early X-ray paintings, he seemed to be searching for the human soul. ‘The idea of looking deep within ourselves, exploring the inside of our beings, became my touchstone,’ he says. ‘I suppose you could say it was a powerful metaphor in a community and religious culture that generally discouraged too much self-analysis.’
As Mater’s artworks have become more ambitious, so too has his quest for spiritual truth, with the artist seeking out its presence among the pilgrims of Mecca and in the vast sandstone canyons of Wadi AlFann. In Ashab Al-Lal he brings the wonders of the Enlightenment and nature together, echoing the words of Edmond Halley on reading Newton’s Principia: ‘Here ponder too the Laws which God/ Framing the Universe, set not aside/ But made the fixed foundations of his work.’