Alia Ahmad Saudi Arabian, b. 1996

Raised in Riyadh, Alia Ahmad (b. 1996) graduated from King's College London with a BA in Digital Culture in 2018 and recently completed her Master’s at the Royal College of Art.

Concentrating on painting, she employs various media to explore the convergence of memory, place, and landscape within her visual and written practice. Ahmad’s colour palette is influenced by an upbringing in Riyadh’s industrial / desert landscape. A majority of her paintings represent the different placid dreamscapes, with linear impressions of the Saudi landscape. The visual language of the paintings plays on the tense contradiction that exists between the extreme emptiness of place and its lush characteristics.

Using drawings made in a specific place, she focuses on key aspects such as local flora in a chosen environment. She has recently been looking into a way to play with perspective in the landscape by placing an emphasis on the temporal nature of day and night. Her works examine the point at which she lightly touches upon distinct parts of the land.

Her solo exhibitions include Albion Jeune, London, UK (2024); White Cube, Paris, France (2024); Massimo de Carlo, Paris (2023), Hafez Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2022); Gallery Bawa, Kuwait City (2021).

She has exhibited in several group exhibitions including 'After Rain' at the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh (2024); 'In the Shadow' at White Cube, London, UK (2023); 'Considering Female Abstraction' at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas (2023), 'Memory Deposit’, Fenaa Al-Awwal, Riyadh, KSA (2022), 'Make It Public: Memory Collective’, Design Museum, London, UK (2020), among others.

Alia Ahmad lives and works in Riyadh.