Seas Are Sweet, Fish Tears Are Salty marks the first institutional solo exhibition of Saudi artist Mohammad Alfaraj, unfolding across the indoor and outdoor spaces of Jameel Arts Centre. Drawing from the rhythms of Al-Ahsa – his home in the eastern oasis of Saudi Arabia – Alfaraj’s practice traces stories that flow between desert and garden, poetry and infrastructure, human and nonhuman.
Titled after one of the artist’s own writings, the exhibition brings together photography, video, sound, installation and site-specific commissions. It is a landscape of recurring forms; hands, palm trees, birds, woven through text, image and material, inviting visitors to move through layers of narrative and sensory encounter. Alfaraj’s materials, often gathered from the everyday – palm fronds, waste, water – are not symbolic, but lived. They carry memory and meaning, local knowledge and ecological entanglement.
This is an exhibition of quiet shifts and gestures. Alfaraj does not assert; he assembles. He offers a form of storytelling that is accumulative and intuitive, built from fragments of local histories and future imaginaries. There is wit and tenderness, as well as a lingering unease about the fragile relationships between environment, tradition and rapid change.
Curated by Art Jameel’s Rotana Shaker, the exhibition features new commissions and works from the Art Jameel Collection. It is an invitation to listen, to walk, to retell. To step into the sweet and the salty, the parable and the palm, and to find meaning not in resolution, but in the telling itself.
Location: Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE.
Date: 26 June, 2025 until 4 January, 2026.
About Mohammad Alfaraj
Mohammad Alfaraj is a multidisciplinary artist working across film, photography, sculpture, writing, and installation. Drawing from his environment and cultural memory, Alfaraj investigates the entanglements between humans, nature, and place, often crafting multispecies narratives and using regionally specific materials to evoke ecological, spiritual, and social themes. Although trained as a mechanical engineer at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, his artistic practice has evolved through personal exploration and an ongoing engagement with everyday life. His work has been exhibited internationally, with presentations at the Islamic Arts Biennale, Biennale de Lyon, Hayy Jameel, and through residencies in AlUla and Barcelona.