Ahmed Mater

Ahmed Mater (Arabic: أحمد ماطر; born 1979, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia) is a doctor–turned–artist who uses photography, film, video art, and text alongside traditional techniques such as painting, and calligraphy.

Mater's work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Centre Pompidou, Dalloul Art Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Nadour Collection Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,

In 2016 his work was exhibited in a solo show at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC entitled Symbolic Cities: The Work of Ahmed Mater. In 2017 he had a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum entitled Ahmed Mater: Mecca Journeys. In 2025 the exhibition Ahmed Mater: Antenna was held at the UCCA Edge in Shanghai. and again in the exhibition The Future of a Promise at the 2011 Biennale. Other important groups shows include the 2013 exhibition Light from the Middle East at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Mater has exhibited his work in the Venice Bienale and at the British Museum.

Career In the 2000s, Mater worked in photography, installation, and conceptual art. His work Illumination (2009) referenced the Islamic world. His series Magnetism (2012) uses magnetism to arrange iron filings drawn toward a central black cube.

In 2016, Mater participated in the protest gatherings at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, where he exhibited Evolution of Man—a work that portrays a human X-ray morphing into a petrol pump.

Mater has held solo exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum, New York (2019); King Abdullah Economic City (2018); Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (2017); Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2017); and Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2013), among others.

From 2017 to 2018, Mater served as the director of the Misk Art Institute in Riyadh. The institute organized the exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018.

In 2022, he created Ashab al-Lal (Mirage), a large-scale land art installation in Wadi AlFann in the desert.

In 2024, Mater collaborated with German photographer Armin Linke on Saudi Futurism, an installation examining the intersection of infrastructure, landscape management and agriculture.

In 2024, he was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in recognition of his contributions to the arts and cultural diplomacy.