“But people now are taking stock of their past… They see this as their heritage and they want to preserve it.”
Ali Al-Ruzaiza, born in 1947, is the oldest participating artist in ‘Edge of Arabia’ and has been referred to as the Godfather of contemporary art in Saudi. His work is in private and public collections around the world. Born and raised in a village in the Najd, Al-Ruzaiza is part of a generation for whom art practice was rare – there was only one paint brush in his school. As a young man he left his village for Riyadh where he trained as an art teacher.
Autobiographical in nature, Dream combines Al-Ruzaiza’s experience of studying art in Rome for five years with his knowledge of Saudi Arabian architecture. The result is a dream-like hybrid testament to the artist’s culturally rich past. Originally entered into a British Airways competition looking for a new tail-fin design, Ataa Al Riyadh combines traditional motifs from the Najd region with Najdi architecture, both of which Al-Ruzaiza has studied throughout his career.
In many respects his output can be seen as an attempt to document, record and codify the physical manifestations of local Najd culture as it once was. The house that he has built, in which he lives, is testimony to this.
