This article appeared in Being Muhannad Shono Issue #70 which delves into the world of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono, exploring his creative journey, artistic process, and global impact. Through visuals and an in-depth interview, it highlights Shono’s works that connect personal memory with universal themes. The issue traces his evolution from early creations to monumental installations, revealing a progression driven by curiosity and innovation. This issue celebrates Shono’s global success and his curatorial role in the 2025 Islamic Arts Biennale.
Issue #70 ‘Being Muhannad Shono’
Acquisitions By Museums
The Unseen, 2024
Louvre Abu Dhabi
The commissioned thread-based installation connects the threads of three religions through a contemplative experience. It focuses on Muhannad Shono’s interest in the phenomena of faith and things that are unseen; a void, invisible yet present that draws in our collective visions and contemplations of our existence. A sphere that is not nothing, but is dense with information, gathering around its circumference. A celestial black hole, a region and space where gravity pulls so intensely that light, matter and narrative cannot escape in such a place.
The Silence is Still Talking, 2019
Centre Pompidou, Paris
The ‘word’ as we know it, has become restrictive, divisive, hardened, literal and unimaginative. To understand and respond to this crisis, Shono journeys into a praxis of the word and a slowing down of its utterance. His proposition is to reform each word object and study the oceans of nuance, laterality and metaphor that accompany these words. He extends his practice of pigment on paper, grinds hardened charcoal words to dust and employs vibrations from inaudible spectrums of sound, to lend them back their voice.
The exhibition explores the infinite layers of meaning encoded in words and how they shape our experience of knowledge and understanding. It seeks to shift us from outcomes of misuse and misunderstanding towards the birth of a deeper understanding of the word, ourselves, others and the Earth.
Approaching Stillness, 2020
The Black Gold Museum, Riyadh
The commissioned installation speaks of a once life birthing spring of oil that has now left the needs of mankind behind; a mythical well that once quenched our thirst for modernity and now brings deluge to our natural lives. The installation is a meditative performance that invokes harmony and pause and is a machine performance of four chapters: Thirst, Quench, Flood and Drought, seen as four speeds of rotation. This practice of rotation and circumambulation exists in many faith systems, including Islam. The installation invites the audience to participate in a ceremony of rotation. When synchronicity of pace between the object and mankind is achieved, we may momentarily approach stillness.
The Wall, part of Three Books, 2016
The British Museum, London
Three Books is a series of sculptural books, each one a seven-day journey and a story of displacement and migration, in which the paper represents the land we find ourselves on, while the ink staining these landscapes represents the forces that are out of our control and that are causing this migration. The Wall focuses on two people separated by a border. They’re trying to reach each other, experiencing isolation and separation, and can’t find a way. They’re lost in the landscape, looking for ladders and bridges, until one of them climbs down into a hole and out the other side to find the other.
The Teaching Tree, 2022
Al Qassem Regional Museum, Buraydah
This permanent exhibition is a manifestation of the irrepressible creative spirit and an embodiment of a living imagination, one that grows despite teachings that seek to cut it down. Through this sculptural installation, Shono explores ideas of resilience and regeneration, both in the natural world and within human imagination, and how each space can influence the state and forming of the other. Shono interrogates the impact of writing and the generation of thought, as well as their respective potentials. For him, embracing the line and mark-making is an act of creative agency. As such, The Teaching Tree builds on central concepts within his practice, questioning the self, tradition, mythology, and the natural world.
Photo ©️ Artur Weber.