Quoz Arts Fest 2024 | A Forgotten Place
A Forgotten Place
Muhannad Shono
Installation
Muhannad Shono’s ‘A Forgotten Place’ is inspired by indigenous plants largely ignored yet persistently thriving around Al Quoz and the Avenue.
Date
27_28 Jan 2024
Starts
10.00AM
Ends
11.30PM
Venue
The Forgotten Place by Muhannad Shono
Share
A Forgotten Place is a public artwork that carries water condensate from AC units inside warehouses on either side of the laneway to irrigate a garden of feral grasses, flowers, bushes, and trees—some of which are medicinal and others edible—that have been observed thriving underneath AC units across Al Quoz despite the seemingly hostile urban environment.
A Forgotten Place is inspired by observations of the remarkably varied inadvertent plant-life that largely go unnoticed yet thrive under air conditioning units outside warehouses across Al Quoz. In a region with very little rainfall, these chance gardens are fed by unintended lifelines of condensate dripping from AC units that operate non-stop, especially during the summer. These nature and machine inter-dependencies—what the artist calls “AC ecologies”—represent nature’s remarkable ability to adapt to industrialised landscapes.
A Forgotten Place draws attention to AC ecologies and thinks with them, to consider the potential of a precious and abundant, yet untapped, irrigation source in a water-scarce part of the world that must contend with expanding human populations and development.
About the participant
Muhannad Shono
One of Saudi Arabia’s strongest artistic voices, Muhannad Shono’s artworks involve multiple mediums such as intimate works on paper, site-specific interventions, sculptural work, and robotic installations. His practice draws on mythology, the usage of the line, the void, as well as natural and reclaimed materials to create speculative and generative narratives. He represented Saudi Arabia at the 59th Venice Biennale with his project The Teaching Tree (2022).
Muhannad Shono’s ‘A Forgotten Place’ in the Avenue is inspired by indigenous plants largely ignored yet persistently thriving around Al Quoz and the Avenue.
