Alia Ahmad: ‘A Meadow…from a dream’

Emotionally Charged, Elusive Landscapes

At Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, Saudi Arabian artist Alia Ahmad makes her debut in the United States with a solo show of emotionally charged, elusive landscapes. As the show’s title A Meadow…from a dream suggests, these large-scale oil paintings (all created in 2022), read as lucid dreamscapes that directly reference Ahmad’s home town Riyadh, an industrial desert city. These paintings are layered with numerous strokes and washes of color, creating a rippled portrait of both lush and arid environments.

Throughout this body of works, a mixture of nocturnal and daytime scenes dance with varying color themes, yet Ahmad’s palette remains consistent in that it faithfully sustains a spectrum of vivid, earthy hues. Each hue-specific scene seems to correlate directly to its intended emotional quality. For instance, Hameel – Morning Rain, possesses downward streaks of grayish ochre, giving off a dreary feel we can all relate to when awakening to an overcast, drizzling sky.

 

 

Yet, the scene isn’t altogether a bleak one, as it is the start of a new day, and golden bursts of light shine through the sky’s muted haze. In time, a bloom is dominated by rosy pinks, mauves, and crimsons, most certainly evoking that delicious time of year when blooms sweep the landscape with amour. Here, the entire terrain, and even the sky, seems to be heavily intoxicated. What look to be the outlines of fields, trees and buildings are seductively fused together, creating a distorted, dizzying effect.

Al Bustan – the grove illustrates a lively place saturated with rows of sky-high palm trees emerging from rich, reddish sand. In the distance, there is perhaps some semblance of civilization and random roaming figures, although, merged with theatrical, abstracted cloud formations from above, distinct features remain undiscernible. The viewer is left to imagining contented afternoon walks that the artist herself may have taken along this sweeping, village grove.

 

Laden with mood, Sukoon – a calm is encompassed by nighttime’s veil. Its swirls and streaks of dark teal merely hint at a lush environment with a riverbank and beyond, quite possibly hills adorned with a diversity of architecture.

 

 

Although site, and presumably era-specific, the boundaries of space and time within these landscapes have become blurred within Ahmad’s unique impressionistic and abstract style. The forms and markings that make up the details of these places are both coherent yet nondescript, giving off the impression that they are recordings of murky memories, or even dreams, rather than firsthand observations. Nonetheless, the viewer can feel that they are real places, undoubtedly worthy of capturing within the mind’s eye.

 

Cover image, Hameel – Morning Rain; all images courtesy of Kohn Gallery, photographed by the author.