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’
On Losing Meaning 2021
Tell us about your work with robotics, and kinetic and stationary installations.
While I was in Berlin, I continued experimenting, especially with robotics, collaborating with professors in the field. I essentially forced myself into their world, and since then, we’ve done a lot of work together.
At first, we were sharing ideas and getting excited, but there wasn’t any funding. They’d get me started on things I could do myself, but suddenly, all these opportunities and funding started coming through in Saudi.
One project we did was The Teaching Tree in Venice, which incorporated a robotic system. Another was On Losing Meaning, exploring a cultural form that represents a word but doesn’t know its own definition. The robot performs mark-making, trying to map out and write down its definition, but since it’s made of pigment, the more it searches, the more it erodes itself. In the process of trying to define itself, it wears away and loses its meaning. This work was about rejecting rigid definitions, doctrines, narratives, and words—experimenting with how those concepts shift and change.
I’m still trying to understand this new categorisation, but even the categories feel elusive. The language to describe the space I want to step into doesn’t exist yet. It feels like excavating an ancient site, where you have to dig patiently to uncover something new.
Right now, with Book of Sand, the work feels like an archaeological excavation where ideas, spaces, and structures are seeded into the land. On Losing Meaning was commissioned for the first Diriyah Biennale.
A word searching for its meaning. As the form traverses a performative space, it moves freely, creating its own marks as it loses its original form, reading and meaning. Through this, the artist invites audiences to consider notions of fluidity and rigidity within the interpretation of text, and the power of mark-making in the birth of new transformative landscapes of meaning.
The sculptural machine was created in collaboration with the robotics work of Benjamin Panreck and technologist Noah Feehan. Original audio composition by soledxb, is a collaborative composition titled, Chasing the Sun’s Shadow, and was created and composed by Orbital Patterns, Quintin Christian, and Rajat Malhotra, using modular synthesis, organic found sounds, and audio excerpts of conversations with Shono.