The exhibition “What’s between, between?” runs at the Media Majlis Museum in Northwestern University in Qatar until May 14. It is billed as “a critical and immersive exploration of the future of the Gulf region” that offers audiences “the chance to examine the meanings of ‘Gulf Futurism,’ a term coined by Qatari artist Sophia Al-Maria, looking at the histories, dreaming, futures, and the Gulf region as a contested field shaped by rapid transformation, speculative imagination, and lived experience … moving beyond singular narratives toward complex, in-between realities.”
Works by several Saudi artists are featured in the exhibition, including the five pieces showcased here.
Nasser Al-Salem
‘Arabi/Gharbi’
The Makkah-born artist’s 2016 work is an illuminated neon light that presents the two titular Arabic words (which mean “Arab” and “Non-Arab”) almost simultaneously, as the only difference between the two is the addition of a single dot (a nuqta). When the nuqta is illuminated in the work, it reads “Gharbi.” When it is unlit, it reads “Arabi.”
“What makes an Arab an Arab?” the show catalogue asks. “And who gets to decide?” Al-Salem’s work, it states, “reveals what lies in the in-between — hybrid identities, peripheral stories, the voices of outliers. Refusing singular narratives, (it) advocates for a future where diverse, intersecting identities exist in parallel. (Al-Salem) remindes us all that we have no one story, but flicker and transition between many.”
The brochure for an exhibition in 2025, in which this piece also featured, described Al-Salem’s work as “challenging the traditional boundaries of Arabic calligraphy by recontextualizing it through mixed media, minimalist approaches, and architectural methods.”
Sarah Abu Abdallah
‘Blanket No. 64’
The Qatif-born artist’s work, the show catalogue says, “responds to Gulf Futurism’s gleaming promises, endless consumption and forgetting of the past.” Her piece in the exhibition comes from her “Blanket” series of digital images on woven textiles — in this case, images of everyday life taken by friends and family members in the Kingdom. “The domestic object bears strange yet familiar images of childhood, like stuffed toys seated on chairs, as if waiting for something to begin. As children, at home, we used toys to imagine. Constructing identities, characters, and roles, we rehearsed futures, tested personalities, and made sense of the world through play. A blanket symbolizes that era of warmth, comfort, and belonging,” the catalogue says. “In the adult world outside, what do we reach for now, when the world moves too fast and change outpaces memory?”
Ahaad Alamoudi
‘When I was Asked (Silver III)’
Ahaad’s featured work is one of several of the same image that she has created in different colors. According to the catalogue, the Jeddah-born artist, in her practice, “documents the social shifts reshaping Saudi Arabia, using symbols that circulate as proof of progress and national pride. Her work reminds us that in a rapidly evolving landscape, society, and future, advancements like women driving shouldn’t be seen in isolation, or as coincidence, but as a dynamic layering of change.”
Ayman Daydban
‘Distortion 11’
The Palestine-born Saudi artist’s stainless-steel sculpture represents a folded flag, particularly “the Arab revolt flag and its derivatives, which are now adopted by several Arab countries,” according to the website of his representatives, Athr Gallery. However, Daydban has removed the familiar colors — black, white, green, and red — leaving the national symbol “reduced to harsh metal surfaces that engage viewers as their distorted reflections appear in the glossy brushed surface.” The “Distortion” series, the site continues, “captures the profound complexities of national identity and its relation to globalized politics” and “ridicules our obsession with notions of identity in a globalized world.” As the show catalogue notes: “It inspires us to think critically about national narratives and constructs, exposing complexities and tensions between translation and interdependence.”
Lulua Alyahya
‘Bullet Train’
The site of a bullet train — a symbol of urbanization and technological progress — crossing the bare desert sands is an unusual one. And that’s the point behind the US-born Saudi artist’s work featured in the exhibition. “(It) draws attention to how the ordinary can become strange when viewed from the outside,” the catalogue notes. “(And it) captures something seen but rarely named in the Gulf, known but left unspoken: Why does modernization look different, depending on who’s doing it?”
