Underscoring Ahmad’s engagement with the local environment, the exhibition’s title frames the canvas as a site of transition and exchange, where the artist’s febrile marks attempt to distil fleeting, intangible forces. Informed both by memory and lived experience, Ahmad embraces a nuanced, localised sensitivity to shifting weather patterns and cycles of vegetation. Responsive and embodied, the artist’s approach to painting becomes an exploration of how the medium – itself unpredictable and at times resistant to control – can register these variations and fluctuations, while reflecting their connections to ideas of change, adaptation and belonging.

Looming, hovering / ماريه(all works 2024) – one of the more figurative works in the exhibition – can be seen to depict a row of trees in a kaleidoscopic yet earthy colour palette, replete with bursts of orange, pink and lavender. The branches of the ‘sibling trees’, as the artist refers to them, protrude, curve and intertwine, such that they become indistinguishable from one another. Thickly applied streaks of paint are layered over semi-translucent washes, creating the impression of a verdant pasture that is dense with growth and life. Describing Looming, hovering as a ‘dictionary of all the different motifs that I’ve learned throughout my life and the things that I’ve surrounded myself with’, the artist’s sinuous traceries take cues from the cursive forms of Arabic calligraphy. In Clusters / عناقيد , these tendrils snake and loop frenetically, reminiscent of Riyadh’s intricate and ever-expanding road network. Rather than engaging in direct inscription, Ahmad draws upon the fluid, gestural contours of calligraphy, distilling its expressive movement into abstract strokes that unfurl across the canvas. In dismantling such systems and divesting them of their semiotic function, the artist crafts a unique visual lexicon – one that is at once embedded in cultural tradition, yet open to the accrual of new meanings.

Similar glyphic motifs pervade Shadow and Shade / طيف and As bright as night, moonshine / قمرة, each reflecting, in its own way, the climatic conditions of Saudi Arabia. Shadow and Shade conjures the sensation of reprieve that can be found in shelter from the hot, sun-drenched landscape. Two distinct colour palettes – one muted and cool, the other scorched and charred – seem to jostle for dominance on the canvas. Weaving, curvilinear forms suggest a refuge of trees, while punctuations of vibrant orange hint at the searing heat filtering through their branches. By contrast, As bright as night, moonshine speaks to the country’s nocturnal culture. Through rich reds inflected with neon pink and orange, Ahmad conveys the city’s transformation at night, capturing an urban environment that appears to glow with activity.

In Drifter / رُحِّلْ, the artist adopts a markedly different chromatic spectrum, mingling pale yellows and ochres across a hazy, blue-grey expanse. Here, the artist captures the turbulent, cascading motion of sand as it swirls and shifts under the force of the wind. The Arabic title, Ahmad explains, is ‘a beautiful word. […] It’s wispy, like a traveller, but still at the same time like a cyclone of things’. Indeed, much of Ahmad’s work is characterised by a desire to capture movement, illustrating how such rhythms can animate the symbolic, cultural and physical dimensions of place. In Date Picking / خراف التمر this is explored through the practice of date cultivation, a key facet of Saudi Arabia’s agricultural landscape, as one of the world’s foremost producers of dates. The upper right-hand corner of the canvas is saturated with washes of deep crimson, evoking the titular fruit, while certain areas appear to have been wiped away and reworked, imparting a sense of constant motion and impermanence – recalling the rhythmic sway of palm fronds, a national symbol and a recurrent motif in Ahmad’s work. As the artist explains, ‘it’s from the perspective of a date farmer, or a person who just sits under the shade. I wanted to capture the movement of someone shaking the tree and gathering all the dates’.

In the diptych Tracks / جرة, the most recent painting in the exhibition, Ahmad departs from her usual process of gradually covering the canvas, instead leaving large passages raw and untreated. Here, biomorphic forms coalesce into an intricate web-like structure, from which small, petal-like shapes seem to shed or fall. The work draws on the artist’s interest in flowers that thrive in harsh climates, such as the ruby dock and blood lily. Long, drooping strands of paint indicate states of collapse, as though wilting or melting under extreme heat, while other passages are fertile and buoyant. In Ruby dock, wildflowers /حميض , she turns to the titular bright pink wildflower, which flourishes in arid landscapes, its vivid colour standing in stark contrast to the muted tones of its surroundings. Ahmad capitalises on this hue, transforming the flower into an elemental force that seems to radiate a furnace-like heat.

Plant life also resurfaces more figuratively in the eight charcoal works on paper, where profusions of flora and vegetation emerge against a backdrop that calls to mind the warm, earthen tones of the desert sands. These monochrome studies serve as a counterpoint to the painted canvases, yet both demonstrate the artist’s ability to interweave lived experience, cultural memory and the essence of a landscape as it is shaped by the interplay of natural forces and human interaction. Ahmad’s work resists static representations of place, instead offering an embodied and fluid interpretation of a particular locale. In this series, she composes a dynamic and evocative portrait of her homeland, one that simultaneously resonates with universal concerns and shared experiences. ‘Fields / ميادين’ is not only a meditation on home and landscape but also on its entanglement with culture, memory and the passage of time.

Alia Ahmad (b.1996) lives and works in Riyadh. Ahmad received a BA in Digital Culture from King’s College London in 2018 and a Master of Research in Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2024); Albion Jeune, London (2024); White Cube, Paris (2024); Massimo de Carlo, Paris (2023); Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2022); Hafez Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2022); and Gallery Bawa, Kuwait City (2021). Group exhibitions include NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2024); Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2024); White Cube (online) (2023); Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, California (2023); Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas (2023); CICA Vancouver, Canada (2023); Hayy Jameel, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2022); Fenaa Al Awwal, Riyadh (2022); 21,39, Jeddah Arts, Saudi Arabia (2021); and Design Museum, London (2020), among others.