In Remembrance of Khalid Shoman: Of Time and Light

Darat al Funun in Amman marks twenty-five years since the death of its patron, Khalid Shoman, with a video installation by Suha Shoman. Of Time and Light is shown in the Main Building from 30 June to 31 October 2026. It is an immersive work of projected video, first shown at Darat al Funun in 2004. A second video by the artist, I Am Everywhere (2006), plays in Al Ghorfa.

The venue presents the installation as a journey through cycles of existence. Writing about the first presentation, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh counted three rooms, seven video loops running at once across nine walls, and a looped view of a Petra façade at the entrance. In her reading, each room stands for one stage of a human life, from before birth to the loss of loved ones and the promise of resurrection. She also noted that Shoman worked without actors or special effects.

The 2009 monograph on the artist sets out the sequence room by room. In the first, black walls carry three looped films of the sea surface, mostly at sunrise and sunset. The second room is long and narrow. There a figure seen from behind, Shoman herself, climbs a rocky path in Petra through the seasons, while the sound of laboured breathing fills the space. The last room joins rock installations with two videos: clouds drifting slowly over a Petra summit, and birds circling at dusk against a red sky.

I Am Everywhere runs for eight minutes and thirty-six seconds and was filmed inside an ancient cistern in Beidha. The display runs in parallel with Works from The Khalid Shoman Collection, shown in four other buildings of the compound. On Saturday 31 October 2026 at 6.30pm, Hiba Masad leads a collective reading in Arabic in the Main Building. It starts from an essay on the installation by the late journalist Ica Wahbeh.