Cinders and Embers, Al Ghamdi’s latest installation, embodies a rather visceral impression of humankind’s relationship with the earth.

Layers of gauze are unremittingly wrapped, stretched and bound, to further be soaked in black paint alluding to the scorched earth we relentlessly keep scarring.

This incredibly visceral proclamation is one rooted in humankind’s incessant relationship with abuse to its environment and conflict with its surroundings. The gauze, ironically, a fiber otherwise used to heal wounds, here serves to emphasize the charred remains of our actions.

Al Ghamdi’s installations typically use organic matter and engage the whole body in its production, through the cyclical, repetitive and extremely physical motions of their production.

Al Ghamdi masters a deeply stringent process of hanging her fibers, yet once the black paint soaks the gauze, an utterly organic process begins to take over, not only in the marks splattered across the wall, but in the rivers that start to trace around the floor, reminiscent of oil spills and polluted waters.

An important point to highlight here is in the blurred line drawn between life and death. When faced with such an overwhelmingly dark installation, one’s initial inclination would be towards a scorched, dead, burnt matter, yet it is the very scorched remnants of ash that provide the most fertile grounds for life to imbue.