Zahrah Alghamdi

Zahrah Alghamdi was born in 1977 in Al Baha, Saudi Arabia, and is based in Jeddah. She builds large site-specific installations by hand from soil, clay, sand, stones, leather, cotton, plaster and acacia branches. Since 2021 she has turned drawings of the human figure into figures of leather, clay and embroidered fabric.

She grew up among traditional Aseeri architecture in southwest Saudi Arabia, and her doctoral research studied its houses. Her practice draws on the idea of "embodied memory". After Illusion (2019) was made of hand-worked leather pieces she calls "creatures". Glimpses of the Past (2020) set some 6,000 tin date containers, sand and mirrors over eighty metres. Echoes of the One in Many I (2025) is a leather circle of figures, 400 by 400 cm.

After Illusion was a solo presentation in the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 58th Venice Biennale. Projects include a British Museum commission (2017), Desert X AlUla (2020) and the first Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2021). In 2023 she was shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize and showed in Art Here 2023 at Louvre Abu Dhabi. Arabofuturs (2024) followed at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris. Her work is in the British Museum, the Centre Pompidou and Art Jameel. She holds a PhD from Coventry University and is represented by ATHR Gallery.