The Empty Land

The Empty Land is inspired by nineteenth-century descriptions of the American West. Here, an image of an oasis is surrounded by aerial views of silent streets, military bases, abandoned public projects, and discarded oil barrels.

These are Saudi desertscapes scarred by departure and occupied by the lingering ghosts of a former way of life. We witness aerial perspectives on vacancy, lands abandoned by populations migrating to the Kingdom’s newly designated, growing centres of industry and commerce. Eerie stasis halts the ferris wheel. The regimen of bald white lines in an unoccupied parking lot is flooded with silence, futile devices to order a void. Elsewhere, tanks and trailers are haphazard, as if ignition crunched treads into motion before being abruptly and permanently cut.

Though silence reigns, the traces of a former way of life can be discerned. A tumble of empty red barrels flash warning; since these images were caught, new visions and plans have been formulated. Far-reaching and ambitious they are founded on a tacit acknowledgement: the essential and pressing need to depart from the single-mindedness of the rentier economy. When black gold sprung from these places, flooding the Kingdom with petrodollars, Saudi established itself as a monumental economic force – a rentier state entirely dependent on its precious resource. Yet, like this flush of empty barrels, this abundance will, ultimately, run dry.