ALIA AHMAD: FIELDS / ميادين

White Cube is pleased to announce ‘Fields / ميادين’, an exhibition of new paintings by Alia Ahmad.

February 28 - April 5, 2025

Her solo exhibition, ‘Fields / ميادين’, at White Cube Mason’s Yard debuts a new body of work that deepens her dialogue with the Saudi terrain, tracing its environmental dichotomies alongside the fluid interdependencies of climate, landscape and human presence. Variously evoking diverse flora, organic networks and sweeping, open expanses, the artist’s vivid, gestural paintings and intricate, monochromatic drawings reflect the diverse topography of her home region, revealing the desert as a mutable terrain, responsive to continual cycles of adaptation and renewal.

Underscoring Ahmad’s engagement with the local environment, the exhibition’s title frames the canvas as a site of transition and exchange, where the artist’s febrile marks attempt to distil fleeting, intangible forces. Informed both by memory and lived experience, Ahmad embraces a nuanced, localised sensitivity to shifting weather patterns and cycles of vegetation. Responsive and embodied, the artist’s approach to painting becomes an exploration of how the medium – itself unpredictable and at times resistant to control – can register these variations and fluctuations, while reflecting their connections to ideas of change, adaptation and belonging.

Looming, hovering / ماريه (all works 2024) – one of the more figurative works in the exhibition – can be seen to depict a row of trees in a kaleidoscopic yet earthy colour palette, replete with bursts of orange, pink and lavender. The branches of the ‘sibling trees’, as the artist refers to them, protrude, curve and intertwine, such that they become indistinguishable from one another. Thickly applied streaks of paint are layered over semi-translucent washes, creating the impression of a verdant pasture that is dense with growth and life.

In this series, she composes a dynamic and evocative portrait of her homeland, one that simultaneously resonates with universal concerns and shared experiences. ‘Fields / ميادين’ is not only a meditation on home and landscape but also on its entanglement with culture, memory and the passage of time.