Over the last ten years, Zahrah Al Ghamdi has demonstrated unwavering passion to create arresting sensational site-specific installations. Always large in scale, ambitious in scope and astonishing in execution. Al Ghamdi artistic practice, physical materiality and visual complexity powerfully captures universal human experiences with a rich, vibrant tactility.

In Moment, 2021 Al Ghamdi highlights the experience of loss and pain in a poetic and imaginative way. Through intuitive and laborious process that is guided by the intimate interaction of the artist hand and the material, the work emerges. Strips of polyester dipped in a mixture of black paint and ceramic glue arranged on the wall to abstractly mimic the moment before the heartbeats stops as represented by EKG (electrocardiogram). The soaked strips flood the floor with a stream of black water and small fragments that feels like the aftermath of colossal tide. Relational aesthetics stands at the core of Moment. Stepping closer to the work you get engulfed by its enormity and you become aware of your physical and corporal presence. Different scaling is applied in art when something needs to be emphasized. In here Zahra’s own experience and emotion charge the work and gets accentuated and becomes a force that moves and envelops her viewer.

Knowing who Zahrah is to know her work and vis versa. The artist employs her own history in all her work; they are all in a way an expressive act of self- portrait. Zahrah grew up in the Southwestern region of Saudi Arabia and was surrounded by traditional Aseeri architecture which has impacted her practice and it is a constant inspiration for her. She then moved to Jeddah where she completed her undergraduate’s degree in Islamic Arts from King Abdulaziz University. She holds a Master’s Degree specializing in Contemporary Craft from Coventry University in England, where she also obtained her P.H.D in Design and Visual Art. She is now a faculty member of the Art and design Department at Jeddah University. She presented her work in a solo presentation titled, An Inanimate Village, Athr, Jeddah [2015] and represented the kingdom in Venice Biennale [2019]. Zahrah participated in many group exhibitions including Herbert Gallery, Coventry, UK [2010], Safar, 21,39 Jeddah Arts, Jeddah [2017], etters, Athr, Jeddah [2017].

She has constructed large-scale floor installation at the Great Court at the British Museum as part of the Shubbak Festival of Arab Culture [2017] and presented public site-specific works in Desert X Al Ula [2020] and Desert X Coachella [2021].