Saudi artist Abdullah Al Othman excavates hidden messages of city buildings in new exhibition

If cities are like palimpsests, Abdullah Al Othman is the artist peeling back the layers of overwritten architecture.

The Saudi artist reads a city like text. He moves through streets as though scanning a page, attentive to the inflections embedded in construction, signage and material residue. His work shows that there is more than meets the eye in the urban landscapes of Arab cities – layers of memory as well as deeper social and historical connections. It is a language that reveals itself slowly and to those willing to pay attention.

Al Othman's first solo exhibition in the UAE, Structural Syntax at Iris Projects, displays his unique literacy of urban landscapes. From a Coca-Cola sign that alludes to the region’s historic distrust of the brand’s association with Israel, to a piece inspired by an archival photograph of Al Maktoum Bridge under construction, each work points to Al Othman’s penchant for excavating political, cultural and emotional residues.

“We often see buildings in their existing states but there is a depth within, a spiritual structure,” Al Othman tells The National. “It’s much like how we, as individuals, are each a world within ourselves, and not simply a body, an eye or a moustache. We have an inner depth that indirectly connects us to the world and the universe.”

Al Othman is looking for a similar depth when surveying a city – one that resists surface readings. His practice was, in a way, developed as a quiet resistance to the modern world’s fixation on facade and appearance.

His work Anticipation exemplifies this ethos. Stretching across seven metres, the work comprises steel, aluminium and LED tubes. It alludes to the form and structure of billboards if they had been stripped of their messaging and advertising.

“The word falls, the image disappears and all there is left is this light,” Al Othman says. “Here is the thing no one is meant to see. This hidden aspect is part of the depth of these spaces.”

Geometric Quotation, meanwhile, delves into a historic moment to explore a pivotal moment in Dubai’s history. The installation takes formal cues from an archival photograph of Al Maktoum Bridge’s construction in the early 1960s.

Using aluminium, iron, wood and rebar, Al Othman recreates the bridge as it existed during construction, superimposing it with his signature LED tubes to highlight the visionary quality and symbolism of the project. The bridge, after all, signalled a stride forward for Dubai’s ambition to become a global metropolis.

“The moment of construction is an important moment,” he says. “You see how cities and their identities are shaped by the structure.”

In Untitled (Coca Cola), Al Othman takes on one of the most ubiquitous symbols of globalisation. The work features an arrangement of rebar and iron around an Arabic advertisement of what seems to be, at first glance, the famous soft drink. The sign, however is advertising not Coca-Cola but Kaki-Cola. The Saudi-produced brand gained popularity in the 1990s and 2000s during periods of boycotts against Israel-linked brands.

“Here comes another case of this depth that I look for,” Al Othman says. “Superficially, it is just a word, but in its depth, there is a story, a principle.”

It is easy to designate Al Othman’s work as a product of nostalgia – particularly with the works that make use of old signage and advertisements that many who grew up in the region will find familiar – but that would do a disservice to the artist and the implications of his work. Al Othman himself is irked by the term. It isn’t nostalgia that drives his curiosity, he insists, but rather “an anthropological point of view”.

“I always think about understanding the context,” he says. “Every generation comes and leaves its own language, colour and shape, and then the following generation comes and changes that again.”

Advertisements and billboards are the barometers of these changes. Speaking of Riyadh, he adds: “In the past, calligraphers would come up with the design of a shop or restaurant that was often named after an individual, such as Abou Saleh’s Restaurant. There was no branding as we know it today, so you come to understand a different manner of how culture was formed in the city. These names and brands, they are a timeline of a city. They show how words are used and how associations were formed in society.”

Of course, each city has its own visual and linguistic lexicon.

“Billboards and advertisements in Lebanon, for instance, have a cinematic style, with composition, colours and writing. In Palestine, you can see the use of supplication in the streets, roads and shops. In Sudan and Mauritania, you see colours that bear an association with the desert and nature.”

These qualities are not inert, but constantly evolving – and, often, their changes represent “economic change, political change and social change”, says the artist.

Other works showcase Al Othman’s propensity of distilling a city’s visual language into its bare essence. A White Ascent reflects upon the Najdi architecture in the historic neighbourhood of Diriyah in Riyadh’s old town. It isolates the stepped pattern that is commonly found along the stairs of the old adobe buildings, rendering them in white against a white backdrop in an aesthetically riveting exercise of abstraction.

“I eliminated the entire house and only kept the white that is found on the exterior of the house,” he says. “You are extracting something while omitting something else, and a new meaning to this geometric configuration emerges.”

Structural Syntax is curated by Irina Stark. Al Othman says his conversations with Stark helped him uncover new connections and enrich the works featured in his solo exhibition.

“Our conversation had no beginning nor end,” Al Othman says. “These kinds of dialogues move you to discover new spaces.” His hope is that the works will prompt viewers to reconsider the urban environments around them and help them discover familiar spaces anew.

“I want them to see the depth,” he says. “This internal rhythm and language of cities.”

Structural Syntax is running at Iris Projects, Abu Dhabi, until June 27

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