Mohammad AlFaraj

Guardians of the Oasis from Guardians and Witnesses Series, 2021

Using and reusing organic and synthetic materials from nature and around the city, AlFaraj attempts to create and recall the spirit of the people and creatures who have passed through these lands, to guard it, protect us, and bear witness. This photograph attempts to capture the tension between the roots of culture and the wings of change.

Mohammad AlFaraj was born in Al-Ahsa (1993), an oasis in Saudi Arabia that fueled his interest in multiple artistic and cultural practices such as filmmaking, video, photography, installation and writing, through which he intends to present a world charged with stories and tension between the roots of belonging and tradition, and the wings of modernity and progress. He draws inspiration from people, land and imagination which are at the core of his work. The core of his practice is experimentation and exploration of the relationship between form and concept, which can be seen through the edited photographs, the composite works of materials and fragments found and reused between the countryside and the city, and the saturated sight and sound in the short films he makes, which combine fiction and non-fiction themes. He often uses and reuses natural and other materials found in Al-Ahsa and the cities he visits, and combines them with children games and stories from people in large and remote cities, as an attempt to create works charged with imagination and cases of coexistence between humans, nature and other beings, and the decomposition and decay that affects the relationship between them, with the belief that salvation is always in our hands.