AL-MANAKH, YOU WILL BE MISSED.

Expedited urban development has rendered the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, especially the city of Riyadh, perpetually heterotopic. The capital city is the product of unprecedented sprawl; though it has existed for less than a century, today it exceeds an area of 1,798 km2. Rapid growth, in a cyclical pattern of development and abandonment, has created entire neighborhoods that act as living time capsules of the recent past.

The ramifications of this growth are vividly demonstrated in the Al-Manakh neighborhood, home to the behemoth Yamamah Saudi Cement Company (YSCC) founded in the 1960s and Al-Manakh Park, established in 2005. The YSCC produces 18,600 tons of cement per day; from this one factory, almost the entirety of the modern and postmodern city of Riyadh has been built.

While the contribution of the factory to the Anthropocene is undeniable, it is somewhat negated by the breadth of biodiversity that has been cultivated by this strenuous closed The neighborhood’s inhabitants show tremendous passive resilience; the transfer of 60 years of heritable traits shape this adaptive strength, making Al-Manakh greater than the sum of its parts.

The installation explores the foundations of this localized ecological crisis, permeated with the melancholy of subtle, yet constant, evolution. The meticulous archiving through a tripartite of photographs, film and found objects offers insight into the factory; depicting the heterogeneity that make up its anomalous amity. 

Alaa Tarabzouni and Fahad bin Naif, Al-Manakh, You Will Be Missed (2019), Variable dimensions, Installation; found object, photography and single channel video. Courtesy of the Saudi Art Council.