“I am Nature”. This is not a metaphor, it is a declaration of identity. 

Saudi Arabia welcomed me like a desert full of voices and contrasts. The masks are all inspired by native animals of the Saudi territory, figures I wished to elevate to contemporary idols. Some of their forms are directly derived from bas-reliefs found in the ancient tombs of AlUla: mutilated, decapitated faces, erased by religious dogma. Through this work, I wanted to return these lost heads to the earth. I wanted to give them back their presence. I imagined seeing the world through their eyes: the gaze of an eagle, a camel, a desert cat. In many ancient cultures, gods bore the heads of animals, a way to perceive existence beyond the limits of human logic. Other semi-divine figures inherited only fragments, wings, tails, claws, but the ones with fully animal heads held the greatest power in their pantheons. 

To look like a beast was not a curse, it was an elevation. 

And it is precisely from the concept of the “head” that my work regenerates: the mask, a symbolic and totemic sign of identity, has always been at the center of my practice, as a result of my theatrical formation. The ceramics, small glazed and molded heads, speak the same language: like relics of a gentle cult, they were displayed within a votive altar. Parallel to this, 

I discovered the Flower Men, from the southern Qattan tribe, a tradition in which men wear floral crowns and garlands not just for celebration, but as a sophisticated language. Each combination conveys a message. Theirs is a floral code; an ancestral alphabet made of petals. A surprising culture, where the flower is not decoration, but language. From this, a second genealogy of the project emerged. 

I used pigments extracted directly from the Saudi earth to create painted sheets marked with the imprints of those flowers, as if nature itself had left its signature. They are omens, dreams, fragments of a possible garden, a tribute to the ancient name of Riyadh, which means precisely “garden.” 

And finally, the masks became action: they became the vehicle of a collective performance that I led together with locals. “I Am Nature” is a radical attempt to bloom where it once seemed impossible.