As a medical student in Abha, Ahmed began to explore an interest in art first awakened by his mother’s traditional al-Qatt al-Asiri wall paintings. In 1998 he heard about al-Meftaha Arts Village, which had been opened at Abha in the 1980s by the governor of Asir province, Prince Khalid bin Faisal al-Saud, as a cultural oasis in reaction to the radicalisation of 1979. At al-Meftaha, Ahmed soon began to play a leading role in the formation of some of the Kingdom's earliest contemporary art movements and exhibitions: Shattah, Mostly Visible, and Edge of Arabia, which has connected a new generation of Saudi artists with audiences around the world.
Ahmed’s interest in collaboration and socially engaged artistic practice was key to the establishment of Pharan Studio in Jeddah around the end of 2013. The idea of a common story that binds people together, at a local or national level, is threaded through his work and led to his participation in the tribal gathering at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016. It was here that he showed Evolution of Man – a human X-ray holding a gun to his head that morphs into a petrol pump – in solidarity with the protestors seeking to protect their land from the construction of an oil pipeline that would jeopardise their water source, damage sacred sites and violate tribal treaty rights. From 2017–18, for its inaugural year, he was the Founder Director of MiSK Art Institute in Riyadh, where his tenure included overseeing the first Saudi National Pavilion at the Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia.
After completing his tenure at MiSK in 2019, he returned during the Covid pandemic to his earlier seminal project of photographing Mecca (documented in the book Desert of Pharan), seeing a rare opportunity to capture the city when completely empty. He began to work on his next book, Prognosis, and in 2021 moved to his new studio in JAX district – a thriving community centred around the arts and culture in Riyadh. He participated in the first edition of Noor Riyadh Art Festival and the first contemporary art Biennale in Diriyah entitled ‘Feeling the Stones’.
In 2022 Ahmed revealed the land art project of ‘Ashab al-Lal’ (mirage) for Wadi AlFann in AlUla, the desert region of north-west Saudi Arabia – an impressive feat of engineering that he has developed over four years. In 2024 he exhibited his collaborative project with Armin Linke, ‘Saudi Futurism’, at the Diriyah Biennale, and opened his mid-career retrospective, ‘Ahmed Mater: Chronicles’, at Christie’s London. Later that year, he was awarded the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the artistic world as well as his profound impact on the cultural landscape of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
His work is part of major international collections, including The British Museum, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
