The Pillow exhibition continues Albahrani’s artistic interest in creating work that brings more awareness to the political realities of the Arab diaspora as well as his own life experiences, through the visual juxtapositions of opposites, such as comfort and distress, illustrated on each individual pillow.
Ahmed Albahrani was born in 1965 in Babylon, Iraq. His life long insterest in sculpture began as a boy when he would make solitary discoveries while modeling clay on the riverbanks of his hometown. He later followed his love of art and graduated from the Fine Arts Institute in Baghdad in 1988 and taught sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad from 1992-1994.After leaving Iraq in 1994 for political reasons, Albahrani’s work became amplified with his sense of estrangement from his geographical foundation and roots, working with specific materials to explore his sense of loss. Arriving in Qatar in 1999, he has been involved in many landmark projects in the country, transforming his medium to address modern-day life and deeper issues in a direct fashion.
He captures our subjective and unconscious state of images. Imagery, thoughts and sounds from our dreams to the perspective of the pillow’s entity. Albahrani is well known for his way of challenging the use of bronze in sculpture which in this case he has transformed its objectivity into a deeper construction of the unsettled mind that creates the symbolism of the restless pillow. This parallel develops a story that engages us in conflicted emotions of reality and illusion.
