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', Man at work depicts four silhouettes of men wearing army uniforms and a signal traffic of people working, completely over painted 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 to stamp security documents, as to the bureaucracy that is implicated by the use of the rubber stamp. As a Lieutenant Colonel in the Saudi Army, themes of control and authority can be felt in this art work, Gharem presents conceptual work that not only references heritage, but is also politically and socially astute.

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“ I think the bureaucracy is one of the most important reasons who create that huge gap between the two generations. So I'm putting that as an artwork which will become a kind of platform where the people can come and start to talk about it again. „

—Abdulnasser Gharem