Art of Survival – this stands as a kind of preliminary statement to all the work of Abdulnasser Gharem (born 1973, Saudi Arabia). Gharem is surely the only artist to be both a leading figure on his country's emerging art scene and a major in the Saudi army.

Art of Survival – this stands as a kind of preliminary statement to all the work of this artist born in 1973 in Khamis Mushait, Saudi Arabia. Abdulnasser Gharem is surely the only artist to be both a leading figure on his country’s emerging art scene and a major in the Saudi army. His story began in 2003 when Abdulnasser Gharem, an army recruit, enrolled in the Al-Miftaha Arts Village in Abha, Saudi Arabia. Founded a few years earlier by Ahmed Mater, this institution soon became the nerve center of the new art scene that was represented in the 2004 exhibition "Shattah", which captured the renewal of the Saudi Arabian scene. From now on, Gharem began using the street as his studio, working in response to his local context. In numerous performances and site-specific installations, he drew attention to ecological, geographical, urban, and societal issues, recording his actions on video or in photographs. At the same time, he was working on a series of stamp paintings in which major events are juxtaposed with the excesses of a bureaucratic system that seems capable of expressing itself only by rubberstamping.

Abdulnasser Gharem

Born 1973 in Khamis Mushait where he use to live and work. In 1992 Gharem graduated from the King Abdulaziz Academy before attending The Leader Institute in Riyadh.

Part of Gharem's Restored Behaviour series of 'Stamp Paintings', In Transit depicts a plane taking off, completely overpainted by a pattern of ornamental Islamic rubber stamps. Those rubber stamp letters are both references to the rubber stamp Gharem uses in his everyday work as Lieutenant to stamp security documents, as to the bureaucracy that is implicated by the use of the rubber stamp.

While the plane usually is an image for mobility and globalization, Gharem shows that in his version (which symbolizes the Saudi Arabian situation in a post 9/11 era), any mobility and flexibility is impedited by a bureaucracy which overcasts spontaneous decisions. In Transit is a reference to Gharem’s earlier work The Path (Al Siraat). The main question presented, shall we, as individuals, as cultures, as societies, follow a straight path and whether we rely on a path at all? The initial stamp painting has been part of the "Restored Behaviour" solo exhibition at XVA Gallery, Dubai in 2010.

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“ I have no studio so my studio is where I can find people. When I see the opportunity I go. That is my way of thinking about art. „

—Abdulnasser Gharem