Aspects 3, 2024, by Saudi Arabian artist Alia Ahmad is a set of five compact, square-format paintings that together unfold a layered narrative of the Saudi desert, a land often believed to be empty, yet is in fact, bursting with life. This series represents a fragmented study of various motifs from the cultural heritage and native landscape of the Saudi artist. She deconstructs her past and present into abstracted motifs that echo the country’s architecture, traditional embroidery, and blossoming native plant life. These elements became fragments of her personal visual language.

Ahmad, born and raised in Riyadh, captures the evolving landscape of her city where native plant life and centuries-old traditions coexist with industrial development and rapid modernization. As its name suggests, the city is an “Oasis in the desert”, where golden dunes juxtapose with urban silhouettes, inspiring the young artist into blending geometrical lines of construction sites with organic lines of the untouched desert. Ahmad distils the richness of her homeland into abstract compositions marked by flowing brushwork, tonal contrasts, and intricate patterns. Her paintings act as visual diaries, capturing the rhythms of day and night, the passing of seasons, and the evolving character of a land she has observed closely all her life.

Ahmad brings an interdisciplinary perspective to her practice, where she reinterprets heritage through contemporary formats. She questions in her paintings ideas of evolution and adaptation while remaining faithful to one’s identity. Her art reflects digital aesthetics, with clean lines, layered compositions, and a palette that belongs more to a fictional world rather than to the real one. She grew up surrounded by Arabic calligraphy and traditional Islamic design, which influenced her work and gave it a sense of harmony.