COLLECTION: Ahed Al Kathiri

Ahed Al Kathiri is an emerging artist based in Dubai, UAE. Born and living away from her motherland, Yemen, she uses her personal experience to explore notions of belonging, place, and existence. Ahed’s introspective and intimate practice engages with written work, sound, textiles, and recently performance. She earned her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Sharjah, UAE and an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art, London. Ahed exhibited in Preliminary Expressions, Berwaz Gallery (2019), Creatives on the Rise, World Art Dubai (2022), Matter-ials exhibition at Dubai Design Week (2022), Nostalgia at Ayyam Gallery (2023), and RCA24 at the Royal College of Art (2024).

Artwork statement

Running through plain-coast-mountain-sea-hill-valley

My practice explores the mouth and throat as the place for longing. I’m interested in constructing imaginative notions of space and place, challenging the often nationalist, patriarchal, and territorial meanings of belonging. Thinking of the spaces within oral language and practices, in-between words, in-between teeth, in the crevice of tongue and palate – my work proposes breath as the negative space.

This series of manuals and scores studies six topographic elements. The manuals map and trace my breath as I pronounce the Arabic three-letter root-verbs of each word, reimagining their sounds and forms within my breath, and through visiting my memories of the topography I’ve seen, or memories of memories that I haven’t experienced in Yemen. While the scores invite the audience to participate in imagining and embodying their breath as they provide instructions on how to produce the sounds of every letter, emphasizing on the places of articulation in the mouth and throat.