Muhannad Shono: The Fifth Sun and Al Mars
Exploring new realms and imagined states of being
Muhannad Shono, The Fifth Sun (2017) Mixed media installation of Ink on hemp fabric 2.2 meter diameter artwork, video projection with sound. 9 minutes 44 seconds. Courtesy of the artist.
With text by Rebecca Anne Proctor, writer.
A large circle scintillates in a dark room. Its white surface is filled with anamorphous markings, resembling those that define the craters on the naked moon. Big black splotches then start to be revealed on its exterior, one after the other, as if made from gunshots—ink explodes onto the moon’s face to the sound of big electronic thuds—and its circular, enchanting exterior then mutates again as we become transfixed with its ever-changing state. Titled The Fifth Sun (2017), the installation by multimedia artist Muhannad Shono, refers to the many creation myths that frame mankind’s existence. It speaks to how the universe operates in great cycles, just like the cycles of the moon. It is currently on view in Durational Portrait: A Brief Overview of Video Art in Saudi at Athr Gallery.
Like all of Shono’s work, The Fifth Sun, which was commissioned by the Saudi Art Council, communicates in various ways—aesthetic and conceptual. It illustrates, explains the artist, the coming and going of a people through “the rhythm of creation and destruction.” It specifically refers to the Mesoamerican people who state that there have been four cycles or suns since the dawn of the human race and that we now reside within the fifth sun or epoch. The work, created in ink on hemp fabric and a video projection with sound by Mary Rapp, also underlines our precarious relationship with the world. Here the moon is depicted as a large suspended drum or daff as it is called in Saudi Arabia.
The ink, which fades and explodes in and out, refers to the “markings left by our actions upon our planet, causing it to shake and reverberate across an illustrated landscape,” says Shono.
The power of his work lives in its multidimensional marriage of art and new media. It’s the combination of media that endow Shono’s art with its unique electricity. “Whatever I am doing in terms of playfulness and experimentation, in terms of materials and technology, it is all part of telling a story and conveying that idea,” says Shono. “Whether it is movements or interactivity, it is all part of whatever serves the story—whatever keeps me surprised, keeps me exploring and not limited to one medium.”
When Shono was raised by his Syrian parents in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom was at its most conservative. He often felt that he was in the wrong place, using his imagination and fiction to better understand what was ‘real.’ Retreating into his imagination provided an alternate world. Although comic books were rare in Saudi Arabia, Shono used them for inspiration. They would arrive, when they did, with black markings censoring figures or an undesired memory. It is these black censored markings which inspired Shono’s signature use of ink. Restrictions on the visual world forced him to create new drawing techniques and narratives when self-publishing many comic books.
There was no degree in Fine Art when Shono was at university, which led him to graduate in Environmental Design at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals with a degree in Architecture. After several years in Australia, he returned to Saudi Arabia in 2015 to find the country in the midst of change. He committed himself to his art and has had numerous exhibitions at Athr Gallery in Jeddah while also participating in residencies throughout Europe including at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. His work has been acquired by the British Museum and the Art Jameel Foundation. He has also recently shown his work The Lost Path, a sprawling installation staged around the ancient rock formations of Alula, as part of the inaugural Desert X Alula edition. The 984-foot-long sculpture made out of 65,000 pipes ultimately, says the artist, “offers visitors a chance to find their own path into a meditative space framed by the Alula rock formations.”
Shono’s work offers new avenues through new media to tackle some of society’s most pressing issues. In his last solo exhibition at Athr Gallery, titled The Silence Is Still Talking curated by Rahul Gudipudi, he showed a large installation made in charcoal and ink on paper that explored ‘the crisis of the word.’ The papers, with their smudged ink surfaces, were fastened on a large object resembling an old printing press. In order to make each inky smudge on the paper, Shono ground hardened charcoal words to dust and then employed vibrations from an inaudible spectrum of sound that resulted in new undefined ‘words’—as black pigment forms on paper. The artist explains that the meaning of these ‘words’ cannot be read, it must be ‘experienced.’
In another work titled Al Mars (2019), Shono creates a fictional timeline for plotting the race to colonize Mars in the backdrop of the race to colonize the Arab world. “I took the dates of the Soviet Union landings on Mars from 1963-1971 and I looked at what the western superpower was doing at that time in terms of colonizing the Middle East,” he explains. “The same year that the Soviet Union landed on Mars in 1963 they were using their financial, technological and engineering influence and power to interfere in the building of the great dam in Egypt.” The work looks at the timeline of events, mirroring the journey to Mars with the continual interference of the powers that be within the region. “I did not possess the technical ability to travel to Mars nor land on it so instead I created stories which are engraved in these images and landscapes.” The installation constantly moves its various parts in an interactive way. When visitors interact with the pieces in the installation they begin to move. “Mars for me is like the Middle East—a desolate rust-like blood colored landscape because of these years and years of interference and landings,” he explains.
The poignancy of Shono’s work lies in its ability to relay emotion. It is an emotion generated through art and technology that transmits new meaning and explores unchartered borders and realms through space, time and possibly also our unconscious thought processes.
Proctor, Rebecca Anne (2020). Muhannad Shono: The Fifth Sun and Al Mars. Tribe, 10, 110-113.