Athr Gallery Brings Six Saudi Artists to Art Basel Paris

Saudi Arabia’s ATHR Gallery will present works by six artists at Art Basel Paris, the prestigious fair running from October 23 to 25.

Mohammad Alfaraj

‘The Storyteller’

“Each time we assemble a booth for an art fair, it feels less like curating and more like piecing together fragments of a larger story—one that has been unfolding across generations of Saudi artists long before I began paying attention, and one I hope endures long after,” says Hamza Serafi, co-founder of Athr Gallery, which operates branches in Jeddah, AlUla, and Riyadh. “That feeling is especially strong this year in Paris.” The gallery’s Paris presentation features six artists: Abdulrahman AlSoliman, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Mohammad Alfaraj, Sara Abdu, and Sarah Abu Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, alongside Rami Farook of the UAE.

“What strikes me most,” Serafi adds, “is how differently each artist carries the same questions: Where do we come from? What do we carry with us? And what does home mean once it begins to change shape?”

Al-Ahsa native Mohammad Alfaraj contributes a 2016 work to the presentation. “His connection to Al-Ahsa—to the land, to agriculture, and to inherited knowledge—grounds this presentation in something deeply personal,” Serafi explains. “There is a rootedness in his practice, both literal and metaphorical, that reminds me how closely identity is tied to place, to soil, and to what our hands and families have built over time.”

Ayman Yossri Daydban

‘79’ from ‘Maharem’ series

The Jeddah-based Palestinian-Saudi conceptual artist contributes a work from a series that prints vintage Egyptian cinema posters and popular proverbs onto tissue boxes, linking them to sentimentality and shared memory. “He works with the residue of everyday life—found materials and inherited objects—transforming them into something closer to memory than object,” Serafi says. “I have always felt his pieces invite you to slow down and truly see what has been overlooked.”

Abdulrahman AlSoliman

‘Collection FIVE V14’

Abdulrahman AlSoliman is among the most significant figures in the Kingdom’s modern-art movement, bringing a historical weight to the booth—a reminder that conversations about image and identity did not begin with this generation but have been building for decades, according to Serafi. Born in Al-Hasa in 1954, AlSoliman is an award-winning writer and artist and the first president of the Saudi Society for Fine Arts. The work on display dates to 1991.

Sarah Abu Abdallah

‘Untitled’

Qatif-born artist Sarah Abu Abdallah contributes a piece created this year. Describing a previous exhibition of similar works, the gallery noted: “Working with hand-crafted processes—painting, collage, ceramics, installation, and photographic print blankets—the works unfold as a meditation on persistence.” Serafi adds: “Her practice often turns the domestic and personal into something quietly political, rendering familiar objects strange yet meaningful.”

Source link