Arabia’s first contemporary art biennale “The Diriyah Biennale” is take place at JAX district in Diriyah from Dec.11, 2021 to March 11, 2022. The Biennale theme is inspired by the idea of “crossing the river by feeling the stones,” a slogan that emerged during the 1980s as a metaphor for action at a time of social and economic transformation.
The Biennale curatorial team includes Philip Tinari, director and chief executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and curator of the Biennale; Wejdan Reda, founder of Sahaba art consultancy in Jeddah; Shixuan Luan, curator at UCCA; and Neil Zhang, assistant curator.
Oracle of the Ashes of Plants
2021
3D sculpture, LED screen
Dimension variable
In the summer of 2020,
Timur Si-Qin visited an archaeological site in the remote mountains of Romania, where he came across limestone-carved temple that date back to the Neolithic era. At the entrance was the obliterated stump of an enormous ancient spruce tree, seemingly recently felled. Oracle of the Ashes of Plants (2021) is derived from the 3D-scanned remains of this tree. The stump is augmented, supported by a generated structure as well as sections of smooth geometric artifacting and interpolation, which are the result of the digital materiality and process. The tree is orbited by a curved LED video that depicts its original environment in a ghostly digital form. The hyper-realistic scan depicts the tree in intricate detail, evoking the complex fragility of nature.The work explores the anthropocentric mindset that characterizes humanity’s domination of the natural world. As told by the artist, “The scene felt almost the atrically staged, symbolic of the state of the natural world in 2020, an omen of the future.”
