Oral Collaging with Abdulmohsen Albinali from his Kuwait Solo Show

“The narrative does not make sense with much of the folklore I study as multiple stories have merged or been altered to fit various aims across time and space, through oral collage. Sometimes heroes do not return at the end of their stories and other times evil characters turn. It is because ” Abdulmohsen Albinali tells me over video chat as he walks me through his solo exhibition Metaphysical Archaeology. Myth as Museum which opened earlier this week at Contemporary Art Platform in Kuwait. However jumbled, Albinali explains the importance of generational storytelling “as a museum of knowledge and storage of culture” in his ambitious multi-media exhibition.

Women specifically, Albinali explains, have played a large role in preserving the stories of nomadic tribes and civilizations living across the arab world. The matriarchs in his family transmitted many stories to him as a child. Trade and migration have also played a role in the traditions of what he calls oral collage. It was not until the 1950s that these stories were recorded, anchoring the exhibition in a series of prints with images, overwritten and expanded by the artist, from Abdelkarim al-Juhayman’s Encyclopedia of Folk Myths in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi author, born in 1910, collected regional folklore, and the book is a form of history building. Interested in world-building and museology, Albinali has ideated the exhibition as a historical exhibition presenting mock artifacts and miniature scenes, akin to dioramas, alongside two stop-motion video works. Similar to repeating Islamic ornamental patterns, visual elements return between the works. Albinali threads a narrative between artifacts, things that are found, and folklore, with images appearing on artifacts as guidance.

While in New York, where he studied at the School of Visual Arts, he visited the American Museum of Natural History, spending time with their dioramas. He encountered a small diorama depicting a Middle Eastern city, which to his surprise, included a small figure on a flying carpet. “As an arab person living in America, I’ve often encountered misconceptions about my culture. Seeing such a portrayal in a place that aims to present factual history felt inappropriate. It seemed to trivialize the rich complexity of the Middle East by representing it as simplistic and whimsical.”

These dioramas have long been under scrutiny. As an attempt to correct wrongs and Illustrate how adjusting a story can change its function, the museum created new wall texts for a diorama from 1939 depicting the meeting between the Lenape people and the Dutch, in 2019. Plastered on the glass are now corrections explaining the inaccuracies of the depiction and why they are problematic. The original diorama that Albinali saw presented the scene from a hierarchal colonial perspective, the truth tainted by power dynamics and, using his term, oral collage. Outrageously, the figure on a flying carpet, however, might remain.

Since October, Albinali has worked for the Royal Commission for AlUla, registering artifacts in the art department. There is also an archeological department—working with digs in the area—and a wildlife department that is focused on the conservation of the natural environment. “The initiative covers 8,000 years of civilization and aims to be the largest open-air museum in the world,” Albinali tells me. Between 800 and 1000 BCE the Fafan and Lihyan kingdoms occupied the area, followed by the Nabataean civilization whose ruins Hegra, a UNESCO world heritage site, can be visited. Petra located farther north, in modern-day Jordan, was the capital of the area. Albinali has mined much from his day-to-day to ideate Myth as Museum, employing and subverting museological modes of narration.

“The word ‘myth’ holds a profound and automatic connection to the past. Evoking something mysterious with ancient roots, lacking a specific original author. Myths are part of our shared human culture,” Albinali explains as he continues to show me the work in the exhibition. The camera stops on a skeleton made of ceramic, an oryx, or desert antelope, whose bones in the Middle Ages were sold to Europeans as unicorn horns. Fascinated by this example of what he calls a “migrated” story, where a real animal intertwined in the Bedouin culture is reinterpreted as sacred and otherworldly in Europe. “Think of the tapestry The Hunt of the Unicorn at Stirling Castle in Scotland,” he says, “which is one of seven tapestries, with others drawing crowds at the Met Cloisters,” I add. The lure of these tapestries fuels the two institutions. On view in a vitrine, reminiscent of a presentation in a natural history museum, is a taxidermy bird that he has altered using papier-mache to look like a hoopie, which, in the Qu’ran, was a revered messenger bird, while in Europe it is the harbinger of death or evil, “A story will migrate, like an animal, and adjust to what needs to be expressed,” he continues.

As KSA’s ruler Mohammed bin Salman opens the country we are currently in a moment of national myth and world-building as Saudi positions itself as a new global art hub. Over the past few years, the government has injected capital to support a string of large-scale exhibitions to welcome international and local artists including the Islamic Arts Biennial (Jeddah), Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (Diryah), DesertX (AlUla), and the Noor Riyadh Light Festival (Riyadh). Albinali explains that Saudi has always had a creative scene and that with the support artists now have much-needed platforms, and art has become accessible to all people—”families can go see art on their days off,” he adds.

When Albinali was invited by co-curator Maya Al Athel to show at the Light Art Festival he told her about an unrealized stop. motion project and they quickly arranged the funds to commission the work, only months before the show was to open. Albinali commented: “It was a great step for my career and development as an artist and there was a clear understanding from the institute supporting that there needs to be efficiency.”

The Dreamer Dreams(2023), a three-channel video when it was first presented at the Light Festival, follows a priestess who has prophetic dreams in an oasis. ”When you close your eyes everything goes dark. But when you begin to dream you see light,” he connects the work the the festivals theme. The enigmatic work is on view in Kuwait, alongside a second stop-motion film Can you hear the Djinn in the Trees? realized with the support of a Misk Art Grant. In the first, the music, featuring mandolins, is composed by Lebanese musician Youmna Saba, and the second is scored by Kuwaiti musician Salem Al-Salem, a member of the band ”GALAXY JUICE” with vocals by Youmna Saba and the Tunisian singer Badiaa Bouhrizi. “Not a lot of Saudis have shown in Kuwait,” he explains. Both gallerists and ambassadors attended the opening. As a fast-speed train is planned to connect Saudi, Kuwait, and Oman more artistic collaborations might be on the horizon.

Razan AlSarraf, the part-time curator at CAPKuwait and curator of Albinali’s show as well as an artist in her own right, commented: “After working on a show with him in the States I have wanted to curate his work and show it in the gulf with the audience it will most relate to.”They were classmates during their undergraduate studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York. On the local art scene, she told Cultbytes: “Kuwait’s art scene has long been active, whether publically or underground since the 60s. Funding tends to fluctuate, and the public art scene is slowly making a comeback after a few-year lull “post” covid. More people are dedicating their time to their art practices, and social media has helped many of us reach wider audiences. The investments in Saudi are echoing here, but I’d love to see more local investments in artists living in Kuwait of all nationalities and backgrounds.”

Before we hang up, Albinali tells me he has started pondering if there is a connection between the lessening importance of folklore in our society and our lost connection to nature. In folklore, humans turn to nature and their natural environment for guidance, animism is normal. In his stop-motion work characters morph from animal to human. Although the relationship between folklore and nature is not yet fleshed out in his research, he aims to explore how we look at ourselves about nature. Perhaps we will see these at his next solo show which is slated to open at Ab-Anbar Gallery on June 27th, 2024 in London.

Metaphysical Archaeology. Myth as Museum at Contemporary Art Platform, Design Center, Shuwaikh Industrial, Kuwait, is open through May 30th.

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