Muhannad Shono is a visual and conceptual artist born and raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Shono embraces ambiguity and the use of the line as a tool for creativity.
Shono’s practice is driven by his rejection of rigidity and his questioning of truths and ontologies as embodied in the power of the line, the impact of writing and generation of thought. Mark and line making is fundamental to this: from his graphic novels and early illustrations to more recent robotic installations, the act of leaving a mark on any given surface is an act of exercising agency in creating and recreating.
The Teaching Tree
sculptural installation with palm fronds, pigment, pneumatics and metal structure, 2022
dimensions variable
Multidisciplinary artist Muhannad Shono representing Saudi Arabia at the 59th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, 2022 with The Teaching Tree, a large-scale installation.
The Teaching Tree embodies Muhannad Shono's investigation of the drawn line and its potential for creation and destruction. Through this, he explores ideas of creative resistance and regeneration both in the natural world and within human imagination.
“My work embodies the irrepressible spirit of creative expression: the power of the imagination that grows despite what may attempt to limit it but instead makes it more resilient. This is a resilience that is taught by nature, in its continuous cycles of death and re-growth, like trees nourished by the ashes of wildfires.” - Muhannad Shono
Curated by Reem Fadda and assistant curator Rotana Shaker.
Courtesy of The Artist and The Visual Arts Commission, Saudi Arabia
Photo Credit Samuele Cherubini
On This Sacred Day
video, 2022
duration 1:05 minutes
For the AlUla Art Residency open studios, Muhannad Shono presents an installation composed of a black structure of reclaimed sand placed amongst the palm trees of Mabiti AlUla’s palm-grove. Made of sand-cast brick segments, this structure becomes a ritualistic catafalque-like structure where palm materials are laid down to rest, and then burned. A journey of plant, ash, smoke and sky, of cycle of death and renewal unfolding inside a living oasis. Amongst the smoke that rises are stories of comings and goings, loss and remembrance.
The burning of trees has also been noted in the oasis as an act of protest against the coming of change, a lament of the losing of the familiar and the familial. Control burns for overgrown and dense or dry vegetation is often necessary in order to prevent uncontrollable wildfires. Thus purposeful change and transformation becomes urgent to safeguard against fires that may seek to burn the world to ash.
Commissioned by RCU
Courtesy of The Artist and The RCU, AlUla, Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia
On Losing Meaning
sculpture: a robot encased in wax -like pigment with graphite tips, 2021
65 x 90 x 160 cm
Unique
The sculptural machine was created in collaboration with Factum Arte calip.er with the robotics work of Benjamin Panreck and technologist Noah Feehan. Original audio composition by soledxb, is a collaborative composition titled, Chasing the Sun's Shadow, and was created and composed by Orbital Patterns, Quintin Christian, and Rajat Malhotra, using modular synthesis, organic found sounds, and audio excerpts of conversations with the artist.
At the heart of this work is Shono’s belief that words are mere symbols given meaning by their social context. As the form traverses a performative space, it moves freely, creating its own marks as it loses its original form, reading and meaning. Through this, the artist invites audiences to consider notions of fluidity and rigidity within the interpretation of text, and the power of mark-making in the birth of new transformative landscapes of meaning. The audio component is inspired by the meditative and contemplative nature of the machine, autonomously drawing, without intent, as it slowly begins to erase itself.
The work represents the artist’s desire for change and for more fluid understandings of meaning, reading, and interpretation of rigid text.
Sculpture: Factum Arte, calip.er, Artur Weber and Quinner baird.
Audio mastering: Audioanimals.
Curated by Philip Tinari & Wejdan Reda
The Mind Ship Exodus
Tire shred steel wire & metal mesh with video projection, 2021
musical score by Mary Rapp
A great exodus within the mind is underway as new ideas, dreams and beliefs seek refuge far away from the intolerant, the rigid and the fenatical state of mind.
For the mind to adopt new ways of thinking it must remain in a constant state of plasticity, trusting in its own power to propel thoughts into ideas, shape ideas into beliefs and to allow for those beliefs to be challenged again by new sparks of thought. Seeking out change within the mind requires the desire and will to navigate unfamiliar landscapes, though many times treacherous and unwieldy they often reward those who seek them with transformative ideas. To find peace within the mind we must make peace with the process of old ideas being extinguished in order to ignite bright nodes of contemplation within the mind.
Commissioned by RCRC for the Noor Riyadh festival, Saudi Arabia
The Lost Path
A sculptural sketch that may lead you to yourself, 2020
65,000 recyclable PVC pipes
Treasure maps often lead to empty chests. We are all in search of meaning in our lives, maps to follow and journeys to undertake. In The Lost Path, Shono reminds us that the journey is greater than the destination with a monumental sculptural path made of 65,000 PVC pipe responding to a remote location in Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia. Only partially visible from the main site, Shono lays out a call to adventure and points us towards our personal buried stories. The path is drawn from a single line and grows to become the treasure itself, a sculptural relic waiting for visitors to explore. The work cannot be seen from a singular vantage point but must be experienced by traveling with it. Shono hopes to gift those who choose to do the journey, not empty treasure chests, but a moment of serenity alone with one’s self, a childlike sense of wonder they once had. The Lost Path is a call for self-discovery and personal worth.
Curated by Raneem Farsi, Aya Aliriza and Neville Wakefield.
Desert X Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia
Book of Sand
Sand and resin with video projection, 2020
40 x 30 x 5 cm
I once heard a story of a fighter pilot on a training mission above the Empty Quarter who spotted a structure emerging from the sand below. When the pilot returned the next day the structure was gone, lost beneath the sand that folded over it like pages of a book reclaiming what once was.
The sand thus chooses what truths to tell and what secrets will remain myth. A cycle of revelation then loss as the present sweeps over the past in an attempt to give shape to the future.
Discoveries in archaeology — from tool to statue, temple to dwelling — go beyond the study of mere objects and spaces. They are attempted readings of the volumes of sand swept away in the process of unearthing the object from its contextual home, resulting in missing pages across a looted cultural landscape — rendering the historical narrative illegible — as the sand that once cradled those narratives is prematurely and artificially eroded.
Commissioned by MISK
The Last Garden of Khidr
Mixed Media installation, 2020
500 x 400 x 120 cm
The Last Garden of Khidr is the imagined sculptural and illustrative aftermath of a beheading, a contemporary rendition of the character Khidr, an elusive figure spoken of in various Islamic narratives and found across many world myths and traditions. The origins of the name “Khidr” are obscure, with roots spreading from Quranic traditions into wider cultural lore, as well as traced through Western literary and architectural motifs dating back to the medieval age. One reading is that his name comes from akhdar (green, in Arabic), and he is, therefore, The Green One or The Verdant One, from whose head a garden grows. The artist mines this abundant tradition to explore ideas of creative freedom.
Commissioned by SAC for the group show I love you urgently curated by Maya El Khalil.
Searching for contact
A machine performance, 2019
machine assembly, Silicon wires, 6 meters in length
Comprised of 1,000 individually threaded silicon and copper wires (6,000 meters in total length) suspended from a spinning robotic disk. The sculpture is highly susceptible to entanglement yet each thread remains isolated from the other through a carefully programmed choreography.
The suspended figure begins to spin and extends its limbs outwards in search of contact, disconnected threads pleading for entanglement.
We are all connected yet severed from the one next to us. A single vivifying force seeks to animate the audience like a machine dervish drawing our gaze upwards. This piece is a prayer, a peaceful pleading for more understanding and empathy with the self and towards the other.
The Caliph Seeks Asylum
A site-specific sculptural revision of the Arab psyche, 2019
3,500 recyclable PVC pipes, GAM Turin
The installation made of about 3,500 PVC pipes on a makeshift camp site is intended to appear to be outside the context of time and place. This installation is part of Muhannad Shono’s exploration of a revisionist history of the Arab psyche. Muhannad Shono is revisiting the historical record as it was taught to him in the classroom and its impact on his Arab psyche – he rejects the inference that self esteem is directly linked to victory on the battlefield - and suspends that “lesson” in time.
The project was specifically conceived for the GAM Museum and is realized in collaboration with Athr Gallery, Jeddah and thanks to the support of Leading Law Notai e Avvocati, Turin.
The Silent Press
Installation with charcoal on newsprint, 2019
Site Specific Installation
The Silent Press, an installation in pigment and paper scrolls is Shono’s response to such erasure, a silent call for the liberation of the word from the hegemony of power, textuality and its restricted dissemination. It also marks the silent memory of the violent erasure of practitioners of the free word and in pregnant pause, awaits and calls for an alternate distribution and dissemination for free words.
A Solo Exhibition at ATHR Gallery Curated by Rahul Gudipudi.
Photo Credit Mohammed Askandrani
Streams, dreams and flow states
A sculptural freehand sketch of a post oil future, 2019
Site-specific installation of 3,000 black PVC pipes
Muhannad Shono explores dreams of a post-oil future through an installation of PVC pipes shaped in unscripted ways and moves towards unforeseen points of conclusion.
The PVC pipes were selected for their inexpensive value, uniformity and their abundance. The character of this bi-product stands in contrast to the power and influence their raw material, oil, holds.
In streams, dreams and flow states, a multitude of pipes are sketched within the interior of the historical, and long abandoned, Khuzam Palace in Jeddah where the first oil exploration agreement between Saudi Arabia and the United States was signed in 1933.
Images of the installation at the historic khuzam palace in Jeddah, part of the exhibition Nafthah, 2019 curated by Moath Alofi.
