Athr Gallery takes Saudi artworks to Frieze London fair

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Athr Gallery — which has branches in Jeddah, AlUla and Riyadh — is once again displaying the works of several Saudi artists at London’s prestigious Frieze art fair, which began Oct. 9 and runs until Oct. 13. 

This year’s Athr lineup includes works by Nasser Al-Salem, Dana Awartani, Sara Abdu and Ayman Daydban. The exhibition is called “Nafs,” meaning “self” or “psyche” and, according to the gallery, it “challenges existing conventions and fosters dialogue on Islamic artistic identity” and “redefines traditional Islamic art forms to offer a deeper understanding of the self, society and the human ego.” 

Nasser Al-Salem 

The 39-year-old is an architect, calligrapher and artist. For his two works for Frieze — “Math + Metal” (pictured) and “Metal Civilization” — Al-Salem combined all three to create minimalist sculptures that, according to Athr, “redefine Islamic calligraphy by infusing modernity with traditional phrases.” The calligraphy isn’t immediately comprehensible, due to Al-Salem’s conceptual approach to Arabic writing. But that shouldn’t lead you to think Al-Salem does not respect traditional calligraphy. As he explained to Arab News in 2019, he began as a classical calligrapher. It wasn’t until he travelled abroad that he decided he wanted to create work that could “coexist within the realm of contemporary art.” 

He continued: “I was asking myself the question that most calligraphers today ask themselves: How can we evolve from such an ancient and traditional art form?” At Frieze, Al-Salem offers a couple of answers to that question. 

Dana Awartani 

The Saudi-born artist, who is of Palestinian descent, contributes sculptures from her “Platonic Solids Duals” series, created between 2016 and 2018, including this piece, “Dodecahedron Within an Icosahedron II.” The series showcases Awartani’s fascination with sacred geometry, which, she explained to Arab News earlier this year, she sees as a way to “understand the world from a different perspective by seeing harmony in nature and the cosmos through the lens of geometry and numbers.”    

“‘Nafs’ is an idea of self and ego,” Athr curator Daria Kirsanova told The New York Times in an interview last week. “Dana’s cube within a cube shows how you approach the multitudes of your own spirituality.” 

Ayman Daydban 

Daydban’s “The Line” is a continuation of the project he conceived for this year’s Desert X AlUla when he created a rock garden in the shape of a full-size soccer field. When he was modifying the piece for a gallery show, he turned it into a series of 15 paintings that depict the markings of a soccer pitch. However, instead of laying it out correctly, he allowed a young boy visiting the gallery with his family to arrange them, which the kid did in a random way. “It shows the ideas that borders don’t appear for … a child,” Daydban told the NYT. “It speaks to the idea that seemingly random people can dictate borders.”  

Sara Abdu 

The Saudi-born Yemeni artist has, for many years, centered her practice around the theme of memory “and its role in forming identities and constructing our interior and exterior reality,” she told Arab News in 2021. At Frieze, she is presenting a series called “I Loved You Once,” which features works that she created by embroidering human hair on fabric, “promoting introspection and transcendence,” according to Athr Gallery. She chose to work with hair, she told the NYT, because it “symbolizes time or resistance to the idea of the fading of memories and the ending of a life cycle.”