Maitha Abdalla, Arts AlUla x AFALULA Residency, Paris: AlUla, Saudi Arabia and Paris, France
'Orbis Tertius is an exhibition bringing together 20 contemporary artists who have participated in the artists residency programme in the oasis city of AlUla in Saudi Arabia.
Curated by Arnaud Morand, Head of Arts at AFALULA, it revolves around themes such as how the world can be embedded into storytelling and the inconsistent boundaries between fiction and reality.
Note of the curator
Fables, parables, utopias, legends and myths are all narrative forms harnessed by artists to reveal the tangible world, to reinvent it—and even to abstract from it. In doing so, the artist imbues fiction with an almost ontological quality: a creative simulacrum that requires research as attentive and rigorous as that demanded in ascertaining truth and verisimilitude.
The term Orbis Tertius, borrowed from the first short story in Ficciones, a collection published in 1940 by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, refers to a titanic undertaking aimed at documenting the fictional world of Tlön. Guided by a taste for mystery, science and literary mischief, the inventors of Orbis Tertius construct a portrait of this mythical civilisation and third world that is so rigorously coherent, it soon becomes astoundingly real. In this dizzying mise en abyme, the orders of the real and the imaginary collide and clash.
The twenty artists featured in this exhibition share the experience of having lived and conducted their research in the city of AlUla, in Saudi Arabia. Within the exceptional setting of this oasis, with its history stretching back thousands of years, lie the archaeological remains of several pre-Islamic civilisations, coexisting with the tangible and symbolic influences of the Arab world, unfolding against a backdrop of innovative urbanism looking towards the future.
In this region, rich with a tapestry of histories, the contributing artists set out in search of the more subtle narratives which, in their own way, define the society and its distinct identities, serving as foundations for establishing alternative geographies of this unique environment and of the world that unfolds before us. A universe where what is told holds the weight of truth, where the word assumes performative power, and speech becomes an act. This approach, reminiscent of Borges’ beloved fictions, deftly blends authentic literary references with chimerical inventions, where historical figures and apocryphal characters rub shoulders and influence each other on an equal footing. A tacit plea in favour of the power of the idea, an ode to wonder and the pursuit of knowledge.
These artists have gathered facts and anecdotes, documented their observations across diverse fields, unravelled the tangible world and reimagined it through a speculative lens, challenging normative and restrictive notions of knowledge in the process. Their works delve into the interplay of veracity and fantasy that guides the rewriting of a history with missing passages, conceiving a place so unique it seems to exist beyond time and outside this world. They also speak to the insatiable—and distinctly human—desire to know and dominate the world while courting the perils inherent in this quest.
Just as the creators of Tlön intended, the artworks presented in the exhibition make their intrusions through the fissures of our world, finding within them the substance needed to shape another universe and weave its narrative. A world where reality does not precede knowledge but is a function of it. An ontology of the possible, in response to the inherent omissions within the fabric of reality.
With artworks by: Maitha Abdalla, Mohammad Alfaraj, Monira Al Qadiri, Daniah Alsaleh, Marlon de Azambuja, Grégory Chatonsky, Salomé Chatriot, Sara Favriau, Talin Hazbar, M’hammed Kilito, Sabine Mirlesse, Leo Orta, Louis-Cyprien Rials, Anhar Salem, Hugo Servanin, Sofiane Si Merabet, Aicha Snoussi, Ittah Yoda, Ayman Zedani.'
