Mohammad AlFaraj
A mischievous storyteller, Mohammad AlFaraj invites audiences to voyage through his fiction and endow with shape and form the sets and creatures they encounter, demonstrating that another world, though imaginary, also exists. With his experiments, more playful than empirical, he approaches his work as a game and art as a daily recreation.
Mohammad Alfaraj is a multidisciplinary artist who works across filmmaking, installation, sculpture, writing and photography. Alfaraj’s work is anchored to place, specifically his home city of Al Hasa, where he was born and raised and continues to live today. As an oasis in the desert, Al Hasa supports existence in an otherwise arid environment. Alfaraj draws inspiration from this non-negotiable dependence of people upon nature, frequently deploying natural and indigenous materials found in the local landscape within his artworks; such as dirt, palm fronds and dates. The artist combines these materials with practices drawn from those who inhabit the same landscape, such as stories from local workers and children’s invented games, to reflect on the ways in which people and the natural environment affect each other, in both detrimental and positive ways. In this way, Alfaraj’s practice is balanced with a poetic vision and an undercurrent of hope.
Selected exhibitions include Find Me Through the Fog, Al Moftaha Village, Abha, KSA, 2022; Al Serkal Art, Dubai, UAE, 2021 (solo); I Love You, Urgently, 21,39 Jeddah Arts Week, Jeddah, KSA, 2020; and Still Life and Plastic Dreams, ATHR Gallery, Jeddah, KSA, 2020 (solo).
In 2017 Alfaraj obtained a Bachelors in Applied Mechanical Engineering from King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. In 2015 the artist was awarded first place (student category) for his documentary, Lost, at the Saudi Film Festival, Damam, KSA. He was awarded first place for his documentary, Lost, within the student category at the Saudi Film Festival, Damam, Saudi Arabia (2015).
