Grave matters: Arab artist uses ‘graves’ to depict Arab Spring

Faisal Samra uses installation as a metaphor to represent ‘inflated ideas of the media’ about the revolution.

Faisal Samra, a Bahrain-based artist, who is  renowned for pioneering conceptual and experimental art in the Gulf region, exhibited his selected works in Dubai this week, reported Al-Arabiya News.

Amongst all of his artwork, one installation stood out due to its scathing criticism of the Arab Spring. The installation, which had been on display in Jeddah last year, comprises of 22 balloons in reference to the number of Arabic speaking countries. The balloons were shown as resting on piles of sand.

Samra had used this installation as a metaphor to represent the “inflated ideas of the media”. The artist has now further developed the piece with sand depicting the graves and tombs of the children who lost their lives during the Arab Spring.

“Initially it was a pile of sand like small dunes that was the installation in South Korea. But after what happened with the death of children in the Arab Spring, I wanted to take it to the next level. I added graves, small graves for children,” remarked the artist.

The artist also spoke in regards to the deadly conflicts in Syria that were a result of the Arab Spring uprising with the United Nations estimating that more than 191,000 people had been killed in Syria.

Samra has also earned himself the title of the ‘Father of Conceptualism’ in his home country of Saudi Arabia, especially after he exhibited paintings of faceless Saudi men and women in altered traditional dress in the 1980s.



“I always react to what is around me, the social, the political. And I react according to my discipline which is art,” he said, voicing his skepticism of the term ‘Arab Spring’ at a time when other Arab artists have hailed the movement.

The artist said that the Arab Spring was nothing but a  mere term that had been coined by the Western media, “I am the first one who started talking about it; even in 2012, I criticised this term. I [created] this work to prove my ideas about it.”

He further added that initially many people embraced the idea whole-heartedly and felt that somebody had “used and twisted” the whole concept of the Arab Spring through the media.



The experimental artist, who is now focusing more on installations and digital photographs as compared to paintings, drawings and sculpting said he is still in his metamorphic phase.

Samra refused to divulge any details about his next project and remained rather secretive about, it only stating that it won’t “come before 2016.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2014.

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