04.06.1973–?
Abdulnasser Gharem
Abdulnasser Gharem was born in Khamis Mushait in 1973 and serves as an officer in the Saudi army, where he has risen to lieutenant colonel. He has no formal art training: in 2003 he worked at the Al-Meftaha Arts Village in Abha. His works made with rubber stamps, a collapsed bridge and an invasive tree have been shown at the Venice Biennale, the British Museum and LACMA.
Biography
In 2011 Gharem gave the proceeds of his installation “Message/Messenger” to Edge of Arabia, the arts initiative he had helped to found, to support art education in Saudi Arabia.
Gharem was born on 4 June 1973 in Khamis Mushait. In 1992 he graduated from the King Abdulaziz Academy, a military academy, and then studied at the Leader Institute in Riyadh. He did not attend art school and came to art without formal training; sources differ on whether he studied at King Abdulaziz University. His army service and his art run in parallel: he served for about twenty-three years, reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, and began to paint during those years. In 2003 Gharem worked at the Al-Meftaha Arts Village in Abha. In 2004, together with other artists of the village, he took part in the group exhibition “Shattah” at the Atelier Gallery in Jeddah. In the same year his solo exhibition “The White Tongue Who Speaks Slowly” was held in Abha, and at Attileh in Jeddah he showed the work “Who Keeps Watching the Sun” (a field of sunflowers). Earlier, in 2003, “Mute” and “UN Inspector” had been shown at the same place in Jeddah.
From 2007 his work went beyond Saudi Arabia. At the eighth Sharjah Biennial he showed “Flora and Fauna”. Then came Edge of Arabia projects in London (2008), Venice (2009), and Berlin and Istanbul (2010); the exhibition “Taswir” at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (2009); the Gwangju Biennale (2010); and “The Future of a Promise” at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). In 2012 he was included in “Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam” at the British Museum, and in “Arab Express” at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
His materials are unusual: rubber stamps of the kind used on official documents, a collapsed bridge, an invasive tree. I think an office stamp in an officer’s hands says more about his position than any words could, though as far as I know he has never put it so directly himself.
His first monograph, “Abdulnasser Gharem: Art of Survival” by Henry Hemming, was published in London in October 2011. Solo exhibitions followed later: “Pause” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017), “Subversive Forms of Social Sculpture” at the Sharjah Art Museum (2018), “The Safe” in the Art Unlimited section of Art Basel (2019), “Smart Obedience” (“Kluger Gehorsam”) at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Berlin (2020) and “Hospitable Thoughts” at the Marc Straus gallery in New York (2022). His works are held by the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, LACMA, the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the Pinault Collection (Palazzo Grassi), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, the Jameel Foundation and other collections. As of 2014 he lived and worked in Riyadh.
Profile notes