Cinders & Embers 2016

Zahrah Al-Ghamdi made this artwork, Cinders & Embers, using what looks like earth and ash. The earth here is not just a medium, but a whole way of thinking about art making as a process embedded in a landscape, a culture, and an ecology. You can see the texture right there on the surface, can't you? The way the earth is piled on, almost like cake frosting in some parts, thin and washy in others, leaving traces of its movement like a ghostly tide. This isn't just paint, it's earth, so it crumbles and falls and changes over time, adding another layer of meaning. Look how the material continues down onto the floor... like the earth is still in motion. In terms of other artists this makes me think of Andy Goldsworthy. But where his work is about a fleeting arrangement of nature, this feels like a meditation on the nature of time, the earth as something both solid and ever-changing, a conversation between the artwork, the space around it, and the world outside.