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JEDDAH: For Ahmad Haddad, art is both a personal and cultural inquiry, with pen marks, traditional dress, and performance converging to question boundaries and preserve heritage through vivid experiences.

The 30-year-old Riyadh-based artist and certified arts educator grew up between Jeddah and Madinah, and works across drawing, digital collage, mixed media, and performance.

The pen is his main instrument to explore the human body, identity, and cultural boundaries. His approach is shaped by his studies in psychology, landscape architecture, and marketing.

“I use art to make the unseen visible and to reimagine the familiar,” Haddad told Arab News. “I’m driven by questions like: What happens when the invisible becomes visible? And how do symbols and boundaries shape space?”

Haddad has exhibited in more than 25 national and international exhibitions, including “The Lost Other in Paris” (2025), “Delicacy of Dualities” in Riyadh (2024), “Sindbad: I See the Land” in Jeddah (2023), and his solo show “Reflection” in Jeddah (2020).

He has also collaborated with Misk Art Institute, Misk Global Forum, Riyadh Art, and the Visual Arts Commission.

He has twice taken part in the Intermix Residency. In Diriyah last year, he developed a research-based project on the boundaries of beauty in Eastern masculinity. In Paris earlier this year, he extended that inquiry to explore how traditional clothing shapes movement and presence.

His Paris installation, “Ya Ibn ‘Ammi,” examined solitude and individuality through traditional symbols such as the agal.

Sound design linked Saudi and French cultural elements in the work. “It is almost unimaginable to see a traditional Bedouin man in a setting that compromises his dignity, moving with excessive fluidity or softness, or even lowering his gaze,” Haddad explained. “These unspoken codes profoundly shape our perception of a man’s role in society.”

Haddad is preparing to publish his research on traditional dress, which he believes may lead to a follow-up study on how fabric, color, and comfort influence male personality and movement.

His visual language blends anatomy, Qur’anic symbols, geometry, subconscious marks, and forms inspired by Saudi culture and Hijazi heritage.

His creative process often begins with a blue ballpoint pen, followed by acrylics, pastels, and collage on paper, fabric, cardboard, or digital screens.

“A pen records hesitation, weakness, strength, and confidence all at once,” he said. “As children, we weren’t allowed to use one until we turned 10. Unlike a pencil, a pen offers no eraser — its marks are permanent. That permanence became part of me.”

“I always seek the hidden form before the visible one appears,” he added.

Blue ink carries deep meaning for him: “I see it as the color of truth — the hue of universal laws before Earth existed. It’s the color I glimpse in the symbols behind my closed eyes: a blend of divinity, mystery, mortality, and truth.”

In addition to his art practice, Haddad founded Haddad Studio in Riyadh’s Jax District. The space has hosted more than 120 workshops and programs in 16 Saudi cities, fostering what he calls “sustainable creative communities.”

“Audience engagement is key in some of my projects,” he said. “I produce yearly works based on public interaction.”

Currently, he is building a strategic partnership to connect Haddad Studio with Paris. “I’m very selective about my inner circle, almost meticulously so — so it’s easy for me and my friends, despite living in different cities, to share experiences, organize activities, and create workshops that benefit people and exchange knowledge.”

From the permanence of a pen line to the constraints of traditional dress, Haddad is a Saudi artist challenging the boundaries between form, identity, and cultural memory.