Muhannad Shono. Works [2014-2024]

Comprehensive monograph on one of Saudi Arabia’s most original and daring artistic voices

This comprehensive monograph offers a critical overview of Saudi artist Muhannad Shono’s oeuvre to date. The publication positions him as one of Saudi Arabia’s most original and daring artistic voices. It sheds light on his unique visual language and contextualizes his work at this particular transformative juncture in the Kingdom and the contemporary art world at large. A storyteller at heart, Shono’s main drivers in his artistic practice--such as his usage of the line, the void, and natural materials to create speculative and generative narratives--are explored in-depth in this publication. This book aims to introduce the artist’s ground-breaking work to a wide international audience and invite them into the complex and evocative world of his imagination.

Muhannad Shono (b. 1977, Riyadh, KSA) is a visual artist who feels no limitation to medium or scale. His multidisciplinary practice is catalyzed and structured by story. Shono’s work harnesses the power of narrative by creating and contesting personal, collective and historical truths. Impacted by childhood memories, throughout his early career and until today the aim and expression of his work is rooted in exploring both the existent and non-existent boundaries which have characterized his life. Taking a singular approach, his work amplifies the moment where impact, transmission, and change occur. This results in the creation of relics and symbols which belong to a world all his own and are defined by a constant need and curiosity to challenge the imagination. His family’s long history of migration has left an impactful paradox in his work. These events have defined his relationship to space and place by creating a complete sense of freedom unconfined to cultural referentially while ever searching through concept, materials, and technique. From a young age, he discovered drawing and art making as a way to realize the world he wanted to see around him. Deeply impacted by restrictions of expression he experienced as a child; his work began to respond to these strict conditions and from there developed into endlessly imagined worlds inspired by the adoption of new ways of thinking, how to spark thought, calls for self discovery, and meaning. Shono has developed his own visual vocabulary and inimitable style, versatile and uninhibited in medium and form. His works have been presented across the world from intimate drawings, large scale sculptural works, robotic and technological pieces, all of which illuminate a journey he would like to take us on.