77. Sobia | Artworks | Ahmed Mater

I am sobia, squeezed from grapes and drunk during Ramadan, at the breaking of the fast. I am made in large vats to keep up with the demand for berries, barley and fruits mixed especially to help you relax. When Ramadan hits in the summer, we are cooled with ice. What they do not tell you is that if you keep me for a day or two, my juices will not only relax you, but perhaps make you giddy too.

This work transcends the objects. Ultimately, what I’m working with isn’t only the artefacts themselves, but the stories attached to them. For me, each tale is the manifestation of the object, and each object is a tangible materialisation of an underlying narrative. The work finds its equilibrium somewhere between the stories and chronology they’re chaptered into, the objects becoming knots or points along the timeline, woven into stories as part of the language of this artwork. Each story draws out a tale that intends to trigger imagination and memory, mixing fact with fiction, with the ultimate aim of straddling, conflating and confusing fixed notions of history to open up the unofficial histories that shape the character of place and memory.
Ahmed Mater
2014