SAF presents newly commissioned and recent works by Ahaad Alamoudi

In Sunkissed, Alamoudi presents six artworks, recent and newly commissioned, that explore strategies of communication between speculative futures and venerated histories. Her vivid snapshots of contemporary Khaleeji aesthetics blend humour with pop-cultural fluency—viral memes, talking falcons, toy cars and insect light traps become tools through which the artist navigates social and cultural change.

Upon entering the exhibition, the audience encounters What is This?! (2026), a video installation unsettling the idealised image of the falcon, deeply embedded in the region’s cultural imagination and visual iconography. The newly commissioned work portrays two falcons engaged in a sporadic conversation, unfolding in a repetitive loop, probing the concept of repetition as a mode of presence.

This mediated dialogue continues in The Great Catch (2026), in which Alamoudi presents an interaction between two reconfigured electronic fly traps animated by light and sound. Relieved of their original function, the machines ‘speak’ to each other—their mechanical exchange holds memory in place through repetition, rather than progression.

Questions of repetition and fatigue also surface in Let’s not twist and turn (2025), where a toy car circles in front of a fragile mound of miniature trucks, echoing the ceaseless back-and-forth motion of a construction site vehicle in the accompanying looped video. Rendered inert and absurd, the piled trucks form a monument of exhaustion, signifying both the weight of relentless development as well as the remnants left along the way.

These ideas are further explored in ‘Tyre mark’ (2025), her latest series of six paintings. Alamoudi isolates frames from a viral video in which a man repeatedly forms tyre patterns in sand and paints over screenshots already bearing digital residue, such as Snapchat watermarks and subtitles. By translating a fragment of digital media onto a canvas, Alamoudi reinscribes a moment that was once fleeting and endlessly reproducible, granting it a sense of permanence.

While Alamoudi’s recent works foreground recurrence as both a visual strategy and a condition of contemporary life, her earlier works situate these concerns within embodied and performative contexts. In Those Who Don’t Know Falcons Grill Them (2018), Alamoudi draws on a Gulf idiom and the Khabayti dance tradition to explore instability, anticipation and impermanence. Performers clad in falcon-patterned costumes rise and fall in unresolved gestures, briefly marking the sand before their traces disappear.

Similarly rooted in collective memory and rhythm, Bahara (Men of the Sea) (2019) is an immersive sound work grounded in maritime heritage. Remixing the traditional Al-Yamal chant with the rhythm of tides, Alamoudi creates a hypnotic soundscape in which shared labour, longing and breath are carried forward through repetition.

Sunkissed is curated by Amal Al Ali, Curatorial Assistant at Sharjah Art Foundation.