My Mother’s Rug (Unique Edition)

My Mother’s Rug (2021) is a project about the immigration of Saudis from their towns to the country’s main cities. Saeed Gamhawi uses projections of a rug, his father’s wedding gift to his mother, as a metaphor for the last connection he has to his hometown since he moved to Riyadh, and as a symbol of generosity and hospitality. In this work, Gamhawi tries to convey the sensory intensity surrounding his mother’s memory: projected light becomes a representation of the light that shines in the artist’s heart as he remembers the scent and texture of the original artefact. The rug has been digitized for fear that its threads might wear out and dissolve with time, while technology will keep it alive a little longer. This process, however, exposes the limits of the connections enabled by technological tools: the image of this intimate legacy is preserved, but it is stripped of its truth, of its details and of the feelings that they evoke.