Glimpses of the Past (Installation View at Desert X AlUla) 2020

Zahrah Al-Ghamdi made this installation, “Glimpses of the Past,” for Desert X AlUla, and the work sits nestled within a vast landscape of rock formations and sand. This piece really makes you think about artmaking as a process. The texture of the sand, the roughness of the stones, and the way the light catches that single reflective spot – it all speaks to the physicality of the medium. The stones, laid out in a winding line, like a memory snaking through time. The light draws your eye, but it’s the dark stones that carry the weight, the gravity, of the piece. Each stone, like a brushstroke, building to a larger composition. It makes me think of Robert Smithson’s "Spiral Jetty," where he used earth and rock to create a monumental sculpture that interacts with its environment. But there's something more intimate about Al-Ghamdi's work, a whisper rather than a shout. It's a reminder that art is always in conversation with what came before, and that meaning is never fixed, but always shifting, like the sands of time.