Nasser Al Salem and Ahmed Mater’s participate in "Calligrafitti: 1984-2013", at Leila Heller Gallery along side Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock, Keith Haring and Csy Tombly and prominant contemporaries Elseed, Rachid Kourashi, Sherin Neshat and many others.

Athr Gallery is proud to announce the participation of Ahmed Mater and Nasser Al Salem in the exhibition "Echoes: Islamic Art and Contemporary Artists", Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Missouri.

Developing an arts scene in one of the most conservative countries on earth never going to be easy. But over the past few years, a small band of artists have scoured Saudi Arabia for a talent… And then take it out to the World.

Perhaps the most significant art space in the kingdom atpresent is the Athr gallery in Jeddah, which has regularlyrepresented the Saudi art scene at Art Dubai. Opened in 2009 by Mohammed Hafiz and Hamza Serafi in a somewhat odd location atthe top of a shopping mall, Athr has nurtured a roster of young artistswho have exhibited in fairs and biennials in Europe and Asia.Hafiz says the kingdom’s art scene has grown up rapidly in recentyears. “If you’d opened a gallery fifteen years ago, people would beasking whether the art goes with the colour of their couch or thecurtains. But now we have a different, more intellectual, audiencewho are not just thinking ‘I don’t think this will go with my rug’.“The first show, we maybe had fifty guests who we personallyrang up to invite. At the last exhibition we had to turn off the lightsto make people leave. Because of the Internet young people are veryaware of the role of art to advance self-knowledge and as a tool fordebate and how we can improve as a society. And Saudi artists arebecoming stars. Some have thousands of followers on Facebook.”

Echoes: Islamic Art and Contemporary Artists," opening at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City Aug. 31 featuring Ahmed Mater

Saudi artist Sami al-Turki discusses the event within the context of being a participant as well as an established practitioner of video art.

Walking through the exhibition, there was an incredibly diverse range of material on show, ranging from documentary footage, to staged ‘performances’ and videos expressing a comical and light-hearted tone. 

Talking about the unfavorable side of the art world, he said he disliked developing the art scene as a strictly commercial commodity, where the art language and aesthetics transform into identifiable inflexible brands. 
Mater pursues themes that are close to him. “The themes of my artworks are personal interpretations of what I am experiencing at that particular time. My artworks are a result of a conversation between my thoughts and what I see.”

Athr Gallery stated that video (works) is an introduction to video art in the region, showcasing artworks by the likes of Ahmed Mater and his camera view of Jamrat (the stone throwing ritual in Hajj); Ziad Antar’s short art/documentary on the 2006’s war in Lebanon with a mixture of sounds and visuals; Adel Abidin’s commentary on war and pop culture; Hans Op De Beeck’s architectural video masterpiece “Staging Silence 2;” David Zink Yi’s street dance performance; and Sami Alturki’s protest on overwhelming advertising billboards in the region.

In the city of Makkah, a new future is being drawn up. Its contours are becoming visible amidst a landscape teeming with initiatives - from the most public to the most private - aimed at developing and reinventing seemingly fixed rituals, states and assumptions; culminating, perhaps, in the re-imagining of life at the center of the Islamic world.