Sultan bin Fahad | The Red Palace

The Red Palace is artist Sultan bin Fahad's second solo exhibition, created with support from Athr Gallery and curated by Reem Fadda. The show featured new works inspired by the artist's material investigations of Saudi Arabia. Taking its premise from Riyadh's historic Red Palace, the exhibition served as a source of inspiration and allegory.

Built in 1944 for Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz, the Red Palace served as a royal residence and later as the Saudi Council of Ministers office until 1987. The exhibition became the first use of the building since its abandonment in the late 80s. Visitors had the rare opportunity to explore the palace rooms, experiencing the tangible timeline of the building's history.

Bin Fahad's art practice incorporates various forms, including videos, sculptures, photograms, and installations. He collects memorabilia, historical relics, and discarded objects from significant sites, using them to create sculptures and installations that represent what was lost, found, and reformulated. His work focuses on pivotal moments synonymous with Saudi Arabia's social metamorphosis.

The Red Palace foregrounds Bin Fahad’s research, offering a common thread among the exhibited works. It foregrounds the labor, historical and political events during the palace's operation, and decisions made within its walls, such as the oil embargo. The exhibition also showcases an extended body of works from the Holy Economy and Desert Storm series, exploring the commodification of holy sites and the Gulf war's calamities through installations and found objects.