Mohammad Alfaraj

The heart is a bird’s nest, the brain is a spider web is Mohammad Alfaraj’s first institutional solo exhibition in Europe. Bringing together new commissions and recent works, it reimagines the stories shared across species and the relationships that bind them together.

Conceived in response to the domestic setting of Delfina Foundation, where the artist was in residence in 2018 and 2023, the exhibition spans installation, drawing, photography, film and sculpture. One of the most distinctive voices of a new generation of Saudi artists, Alfaraj draws on social rituals, folklore and everyday life to build immersive narratives in which humans, animals, insects and plants appear as companions, neighbours and family.

For Alfaraj, emotions, memories and the stories we tell ourselves are woven from many threads, some lived and some imagined. The title of the exhibition reflects this poetic logic: the heart, like a nest, is a place of care, intimacy and belonging, while the brain, like a spider web, is a place of complexity and entanglement.

The artist imagines home as a boundless, shared ecology, bringing to light unexpected relationships that can be ordinary, humorous and even profound. As he explains: “I consider home and family in the widest sense. The insects are my long-lost relatives who want to live off me, the cows are my loud neighbours that I have ‘beef’ with, and birds always ask about me without wanting anything. This exhibition is a homecoming to Delfina which provided the nurturing soil from which I, and many artists, grew taller.”

The exhibition showcases Alfaraj’s inventive, spiritual and allegorical practice. By combining disparate materials, narratives and more-than-human perspectives into poetic encounters, the works invite visitors to rethink what family and home can mean, engaging with today’s social and environmental realities while keeping open the possibility of hope.