‘Sunkissed’ examines visual culture in a rapidly transforming Gulf
Ahaad Alamoudi, Those Who Don’t Know Falcons Grill Them (still), (2018). Image courtesy of the artist.
Ahaad Alamoudi’s exhibition ‘Sunkissed’, presented at Sharjah Art Foundation, unites recent and newly commissioned works that probe how collective identity and visual expression evolve amid rapid transformation in the Gulf. In Gallery 6 at Al Mureijah Square, the exhibition deploys everyday imagery of development—motifs of sun, sand, technology, and spectacle—to analyse how participants create, change, and root ideas of progress in cultural life.
Working across photography, video and print-based installation, Alamoudi approaches the contemporary Khaleeji landscape through a visual language shaped by humour, appropriation and critical distance. Rather than positioning development as an abstract policy framework, the exhibition attends to its manifestations in popular culture, digital media and shared environments, where aspiration and contradiction often coexist.
Visual languages of progress and popular culture
Central to ‘Sunkissed’ is Alamoudi’s engagement with the imagery that saturates everyday life in the region. Viral memes, talking falcons, automated toy cars and insect light traps recur across the exhibition as both subjects and devices. These elements function as tools for processing rapid change, reflecting how technological novelty, entertainment and tradition intersect within contemporary visual culture.
Alamoudi’s works capture the ways in which symbols of progress are absorbed, mimicked and rearticulated in daily experience. By foregrounding humour and pop-cultural fluency, the exhibition resists singular or authoritative narratives of development. Instead, it reveals how ideas of advancement are continually negotiated through repetition, exaggeration and play, producing meanings that are at once familiar and unstable.
Speculative futures and inherited histories
While the exhibition is rooted in present-day imagery, it also engages with longer temporal frameworks. ‘Sunkissed’ moves between speculative futures and venerated histories, examining how inherited cultural forms are reimagined within contemporary conditions. This oscillation underscores the tension between continuity and disruption that characterises the region’s social and spatial transformation.
Alamoudi’s practice does not seek to resolve these tensions. Rather, it holds them in suspension, allowing moments of ambiguity, irony and excess to surface. Through this approach, the exhibition reflects on how collective identity is shaped not only by official narratives of growth but also by the informal, often contradictory processes through which images circulate and acquire meaning.
Curatorial context and artistic practice
Curated by Amal Al Ali, Curatorial Assistant at Sharjah Art Foundation, ‘Sunkissed’ forms part of the Foundation’s spring programme and contributes to ongoing institutional conversations around visual culture, representation and the politics of development. The exhibition builds on Alamoudi’s sustained inquiry into history and representation within Saudi Arabia’s changing social landscape, extending themes explored in earlier solo presentations in Jeddah.
By placing Alamoudi’s work within Sharjah Art Foundation’s programme, ‘Sunkissed’ emphasises the role of contemporary art in examining the images and ideas shaping progress. The exhibition provides space to reflect on how speculation, satire, and visual excess help navigate rapid change.
‘Ahaad Alamoudi: Sunkissed’ is on view at Sharjah Art Foundation, Gallery 6, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, from 8 February to 3 May 2026. For more information, please visit Sharjah Art Foundation.
