With Light I Create a Hand of Love and Extend it to You

As part of a wider practice centered around group-centric participatory activities, where people and their imaginations are at the core of the work, Mohammad Alfaraj presents his new participatory artwork, With Light, I Create a Hand of Love and Extend it to You (2022), inspired by working with children both within his family and across his home village.

This new work for Noor Riyadh is interactive; it cannot exist without an audience. Comprising a screen and a camera set up in an outdoor location, nothing occurs until audience members take out their phones, using the light emitted from them as brushes with which to paint in the air. 

The traces of these ephemeral gestures, however, will also be recorded by a slow-shutter camera. The captured images will be simultaneously displayed on the large screen of the installation, visible to the audience present. As they participate, sharing their actions with those around them, they are able to watch this collaborative act of creation unfold in real-time.