Rooted in Warmth

Rooted in Warmth is an installation by the Saudi artist Raghad Al-Ahmad, presented by Ithra at Design Doha Biennial 2026. It is on view in Fereej Al Asmakh, Doha, from 5 November 2026 to 31 January 2027. The curators are Shahad Al Wazani and Alaa Al Qahtani. The work is a sculptural landscape of wooden seating structures wrapped in handwoven rugs. Visitors are asked to take off their shoes, then climb, sit and rest on it.

The starting point is the artist's childhood in the mountain farmlands of Taif. There, community life took place under the trees, and the installation restages those gatherings. Its rugs rework Al-Sadu, a weaving tradition kept up mostly by women. Their colours come from four fruits of historical importance in Saudi Arabia: dates, citrus, grapes and pomegranates. Forms and palette recall the "joyful disorder" of crates of produce. The organisers also frame the piece as "a data-informed narrative" about the Saudi fruit sector, in which dates alone exceed 1.3 million tons a year.

Ithra, the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, commissioned the work. Ithra reported that more than 50 women artisans in Al-Jawf, in the north of the country, took part in making it. In June 2025 it was shown at Concéntrico, a festival of architecture and design held in Logroño, Spain. That year was Ithra's second in a row at the festival.

Raghad Al-Ahmad was born in Jeddah. She works across collage, digital film, installation and sculpture. In her collages, old and new imagery drawn from Gulf and Middle Eastern history meets references to Memphis design, the Bauhaus and Islamic architecture. In 2022 the Office of the Arts at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology held her solo exhibition WOMEN IN ORBIT: Speculative Fictions, Satellite and Cyborg Bedouins. Rooted in Warmth is one of more than fifteen exhibitions in the Biennial, whose headline exhibition is Arab Design Now 2026. Entry is by ticket.