Mohammad AlFaraj (born in 1993 in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia) presents himself as a storyteller for his first solo exhibition in France, at Mennour gallery.In his film The Date Fruit of Knowledge, which lends its title to the exhibition, AlFaraj draws on the oral tradition of his native country to tell the story — in Arabic then English, his two spoken languages — of the initiatory journey of a young bird thirsty for knowledge: the story of a bulbul — whose body is sculpted from a date — that hears of a legend by the extinct Arabian leopard which says that every palm tree bears a single fruit containing all the knowledge in the world. Insatiable, the bird sets out to strip each tree of its dates, whether green or overripe, forbidding fellow birds to indulge in this gargantuan feast. As his growing bulimia brings him to the brink of death, he ingests one last odd-looking fruit. “Suddenly,” says AlFaraj, “his eyes turn white, his mind lights up and all knowledge comes to him like a revelation.”
How to identify, name, locate, recite, calculate... Nothing is unknown to him. He is aware of everything that was, everything that is, everything that will be. Yet despite his immense power, he experiences extreme solitude: he is completely disconnected from all the other species, who take pleasure in learning by making mistakes. Everything that is beautiful and exciting becomes known to him, and therefore dull, while in the face of everything that is horrible and painful, he stands aware and powerless. Devastated, the bulbul decides to end it all. But his old friends recommend him to turn to fire, the master of oblivion. And so, throughout the night, the bird gives all his knowledge up to the flames. At dawn, he has forgotten everything. From that moment on, he begins to savour life and knowledge to the full, date by date, day by day, in communion with his peers.
AlFaraj takes part in a visual and narrative production that documents changes and tensions between urban and natural environments, fractures between tradition and progress, generational gaps, social claims, issues raised by the need for environmental preservation. The palm and its fruit are recurring in his pictorial, photographic and sculptural practice. The possibilities of coexistence between living species and nature are a constant source of inspiration.
His works are like a series of sensitive areas, bearing witness to the complexity of the relationships that make up a global landscape in constant mutation. In a post-Anthropocene era, the bird feeds on what it is made of, and human domination is no more. Echoing the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, AlFaraj celebrates the still fertile interdependence of species. Just as the migrating bird repeats and shares his song from flight to flight, the artist scatters the legends he invents, and thereby enriches a collective imaginary with a universal calling.