AlUla: In his newly-commissioned work for the exhibition “Arduna” (Our Land), part of the pre-opening program for the upcoming AlUla Contemporary Art Museum, the Riyadh-based Saudi visual artist Ayman Zedani constructs a fictional framework that proposes a radical re-reading of our region’s landscapes and the stories told within them.
While they were helpful in his quest, he chose not to use existing Nabatean or Dadanitic scripts, native to AlUla, instead, he crafted his own script, which he named Daraj (stairs), as it serves as a staircase bridging ancient and contemporary cultures.
A poster for Ayman Zedani’s 'In the Bellies of the Rocks.' (Supplied)
The work, titled “In the Bellies of the Rocks,” arose from Zedani’s participation in the AlUla Artists Residency Program. It is a two-channel video installation in which the two screens are positioned in a V-formation. It merges archival material, new footage and 3D renderings of archaeological sites. Across four acts, the narrative oscillates between documentation and speculation, from the rediscovery of ancient inscriptions to the establishment of a fictional Museum of Earth Matter and, finally, to a visionary proposition that these gateways might be reactivated.
