The exhibition presents models and sketches of artist Ahmed Mater’s site specific art installation that is proposed for the Wadi Al Fann in Al Ula. Ashab Al-Lal takes its name from a poem by nabati poetry on arabian desert , where the mirage – always ephemeral, out of reach – becomes a guide and a reason to continue onwards in the expanse of the desert. The work takes the image of ‘navigations’ and returns it to the desert environment where it first originated. It asks questions about the ‘image’ – what constitutes its meaning, from where does it derive its particular iconography and power, how does it telegraph its story today and into the future?
In this house specifically, you see: how it became a city? How it grew? What were its first features? And the context for an entire life Muharraq lived in the nineteen eighties. The Architectural Heritage House is home to the artistic works, drawings, architectural photographs gathered or drawn by the architect John Yarwood in homage to his stay in the city of Muharraq between 1983 and 1985.
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