OASIS 

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As a child, I believed that oases were mirages — visions of an idyllic, unattainable place that appeared in the desert and dissolved before you could reach them. I arrived at Al-Ahsa with that childhood image intact, looking for a dream in full color.

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What I found was the largest oasis in the world: 2.5 million date palms fed by an enormous underground aquifer, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape that has sustained human civilization since the fifth millennium BC. Surrounded by the vast sands of the Rub' al Khali — the Empty Quarter — Al-Ahsa is not a mirage. It is water made visible. It is the proof that the desert can be transformed.

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But an oasis is more than water. For thousands of years, oases were the nervous system of the ancient world — places of extraordinary strategic and cultural importance where caravan routes converged. Travelers crossing the Arabian Peninsula would stop to resupply, to rest, to trade. And in that trading they exchanged not only goods but knowledge: languages, religions, stories, medicines, maps. The oasis was a place of encounter between worlds that would otherwise never have met. Al-Ahsa sits at the center of this history — a crossroads of civilizations, a place where the East and the West have been meeting for millennia.

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I spent several nights walking through the oasis under the moonlight. The nightly breeze and the humidity of the place made me feel like I was in a vivid dream where everything was possible. I photographed producers of al-hassawi rice — a reddish rice grown only here — date farmers, camel caretakers, craftswomen, and land workers who had come from Sudan, Bangladesh and beyond. People connected to the earth through the same underground water that had drawn settlers for seven thousand years.

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The project also gave rise to a collaboration with Buenos Aires jeweler 0800 Don Rouch — one of the leading figures of contemporary jewelry in Argentina. Together we created a 400-gram silver pendant inspired by the concept of oasis: a full-ice piece that opens to reveal a small photographic print and a text. Two palm trees — the most resonant symbol of the Arabian Peninsula — cast in silver, as if to hold the oasis in the hand.

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Entering and leaving Al-Ahsa is like stepping into a dream and then returning to reality.

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— Alejandro.

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Technical Sheet

 

Shooting: November–December 2022  ·  Location: Al-Ahsa Oasis, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia

Commissioned by: Visual Arts Commission, Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia

Curated by: Mohamed Somji

29 photographs  ·  Long exposures, moonlight and artificial light

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Selected Exhibitions

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2023  ·  Alhasa Hassana — Hayy Jameel Art Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Curated by Mohamed Somji

2025  ·  In a New Light — Abbazia, Venice, Italy. Curated by Mohamed Somji

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