In the small town of Al Rudhah in Al Mudaybi, Oman, artist Kawthar Al Harthi collects natural materials, debris, and archival objects to create intricate collages and meditative installations. Her practice, which has taken her to residencies and exhibitions from Muscat and Dubai to Vienna and Budapest, explores personal memory, the effects of climate change on the Omani landscape, and collective histories.

Collaging as a creative process and art form gained traction in the early 1900s when modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, overlaid contemporary media and images to tell new stories. Collage artists today often use the medium to critique practices of mass consumption and consumer culture, using the very objects of their critique in their commentary. Artists around the world also turn to collaging as a means to explore more intimate histories. Mixed media Emirati artist Maryam Alhuraiz, for instance, compiles her childhood photos and stitches them together with red thread to examine the often fragmented nature of memories while also adding a playful touch to otherwise perfectly posed and idealized photographs.

As a researcher, archivist, and mixed media artist, Kawthar Al Harthi draws inspiration from material objects around her that tell stories of contemporary life in Oman. For a project in 2018, she collected library cards from the Sultan Qaboos University library to create a collage reflecting a snippet of university life in the late 20th century.

AGSIW spoke to Kawthar, the winner of Stal Gallery’s 2022 Young Emerging Artist Prize, to learn more about her creative methods across various media and how her small-town upbringing shaped her artistic practice.

AGSIW: How did you become an artist?

Kawthar: I started drawing when I was a child, and then I began making collages. I really like playing with elements and imagining things and combining things together using the collage format. I’ve also tried photography and playing with my photos, using them to make collages. I’m experimenting with installation art now, so in the last two years I’ve started using ready-made objects. I’m thinking of the opportunities that these objects have, their memories, and their stories. I’m really interested in this. I collect objects from my village, Al Mudaybi in Sharqiyah, and I play with them, and I make installations with them. I studied art education at Sultan Qaboos University, and then I completed a master’s degree in art at SQU.

AGSIW: How did you start collaging?

Kawthar: I actually started collaging with two artworks. I collected my father’s notebooks, schoolbooks, phonebook, and so many elements that he left behind, and I started making a collage out of it, called “What Father Left.” My father died when I was nine years old, and I remember after his death I started searching in his library – he had a big library – and I started looking into his notebooks and his diaries and all of that. I also took photos of things that he left, like a tree that he grew and that died and was later cut down.

I think it helped to visualize his life in a different way – maybe in my way as a researcher or someone who wants to discover more about this person. That was one of my earliest collage works, and then I started to play more with collages.

AGSIW: How did this creative research exercise help you hone your craft as a collage artist? What did you learn through this process?

Kawthar: I was just playing and discovering. I wanted to let myself play without rules and just do what I felt. After “What Father Left,” I started to minimalize the elements in my collages. This work had so many elements – so many drawings, writings, and photos. But then I started to use fewer elements because I felt like I didn’t need all of this to say something.

AGSIW: What is an example of one of your later, more minimalist collages?

Kawthar: It was a collage that I made in 2020. I had spent a year without making any art and just sketching. So, I decided to just play with things without considering it as an artwork. I just took pieces from my favorite poems and a photo, and then I started drawing on them and writing in a random way.

I wrote something from my diary, and I started drawing my favorite things and things from my memory. It eventually became an artwork and then became the cover for my friend’s book. I was so happy with that work because it opened the way for me for so many works.

AGSIW: What do different colors, such as red, signify in your work?

Kawthar: I don’t think a lot about colors. I just put what I feel; when I feel it’s red, I add red. In some of my work, red can reflect blood or life and maybe a desire to bring things back to life. Sometimes I use a color like red to reconnect with an element in the work, maybe an abandoned place or something hidden within a memory.

AGSIW: How did you later begin experimenting with installation art?

Kawthar: For an exhibition at Stal Gallery a few years ago, “Center of the Universe: Reflection on Self-Portrait,” I was thinking of the palm tree as a reflection of my inner self. Every year, we cut pieces of the palm tree branches, and new branches grow. I was thinking of time and my old memories and how every year I cut parts of myself, and I grow other, new parts. This work was my first installation. I was experimenting and started with a photo, then I started thinking about what I could do with this photo, how I could turn it into a new story.

I took this picture in a wadi (valley in Arabic), in the village next to mine, and was standing in the middle of the palm trees and wadi, so the position of my body was similar to the position of the palm trees standing there. I’ve been very connected with nature since I was a child. I grew up in a place full of palm trees, and we used to take care of the trees and the animals and all of that. So, I think part of myself is very connected with nature.

AGSIW: Tell us about the installation that you later created as the grand prize winner for the Stal Gallery Young Emerging Artist Prize.

Kawthar: For this work, I collected bricks that are the remnants of walls that have been destroyed by floods in my village. These are very old walls, so it was like the walls were witnessing what has been happening in the village for a long time – it’s like they have a memory. When the floods destroyed parts of these walls, it was like part of the memory was gone. In a way, this can be related to climate change. In the last few years, we have had a lot of floods, and they have destroyed a lot of things.

I collected the bricks from the bottom of the wadi. These are the walls of farms, and I really like the way that the farmers rebuild these specific parts of the wall. Some of them just put bricks without cement, and I found it very interesting visually. The bricks were in the middle of the wadi under the soil, so part of them was hidden. To me, that is like the hidden memories that we have in the unconscious mind.

The gypsum hands in the installation can be seen as symbols of bringing back memories or touching them to feel that they still exist.

AGSIW: What are some of the different materials that you have been experimenting with?

Kawthar: During the pandemic, I was doing something very strange – I was collecting pieces of poems, whether from my father’s library or others I had read, that talk about doors or the symbol of the door. Essentially, I scanned a page of a poem, then I cut out the piece about the door and kept the remaining words. The remains are what I used in my work. At this time, I was also really upset that some of my favorite trees were cut to build something in their place. So, I started drawing them and then adding lines from these poems. I still don’t know what to do with the door parts, so I’m keeping them for the future.

There is also something new: I’m working on a collage, but in a different way – I’m now working with textile. It’s something new, but the style is related to my previous work. The collage is for a specific project that hasn’t been announced yet, for later this year or early next year. It’s about my grandmother who was born in Zanzibar, and I went to see the place where she was born a few weeks ago.

AGSIW: In these poems and your collages, what does the symbol of the door mean to you?

Kawthar: It’s not about the door or removing the door. I just have a box full of pieces of poems, and I started discovering what these pieces were. Sometimes it doesn’t have a specific meaning – I don’t think art should be very direct. If it’s something random, it makes you wonder what the meaning could be. Sometimes art is not understandable. It’s like I’m not understanding a certain moment, so I put this feeling into the art.