Makkah

Ahmed Mater was born in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, in 1979. He is an artist as well as a physician.

The artist uses photography, calligraphy, painting, installation, performance, and video to embrace the paradox of science and religion, merging politically-themed artistic objectives with the scientific goals of his medical training. 

Mater saw history being destroyed and erased to make way for modern developments and wanted to provide a rare insight into this important, magnetic city through the eyes of an artist, becoming the only art photographer to use Mecca as his subject.   

Many of his images show the battle between heritage and modernity, and between humans and infrastructure, with the crowds of pilgrims packed into roads leading into and out of the holy cities, circling the holy Ka’ba, all in the shadows of cranes and machinery.

Deeply passionate about Saudi’s current art scene, Mater looks to the future with optimism, having personally witnessed the swift growth in arts education and creative risks taken across the Kingdom.