Written by Christelle El Chamy

Maha Malluh, born in Jeddah in 1959, is a pioneering conceptual artist based in Riyadh. She is best known for her large-scale mixed media installations that integrate found objects as markers of collective memory and cultural identity in Saudi Arabia. Her work draws upon emblematic cultural symbols of Saudi civilization, exploring themes of globalization and its impact on the Kingdom’s urban population, rural environments, and material culture. 

From a young age, Malluh developed a deep passion for art, particularly drawing and painting. Her family nurtured her talent, referring to her as "the artist" and providing art supplies and books. Growing up during Saudi Arabia’s oil boom in the 1960s and 1970s, she witnessed a period of artistic growth when public schools included art education throughout the Kingdom. However, after the assassination of King Faisal in 1975, rising extremism led to the restrictive cultural shifts of 1979. This dramatically transformed Saudi society, curtailing creative freedoms and reshaping the art scene. 

Malluh traveled in order to pursue art education, studying Fine Arts at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, USA, from 1978 to 1980. Upon returning to Riyadh in 1980, she encountered the more conservative cultural environment shaped by the post-1979 sociopolitical climate, which restricted artistic expression and public visibility for women. These constraints drove her toward conceptual art, emphasizing critical thinking and challenging traditional boundaries in Arab education. 

In keeping with the educational paths considered appropriate for women at the time, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English literature from King Saud University, Riyadh, in 1993, and received a Certificate in Design and Photography from De Anza College in California, USA, in 2000. Her diverse academic background shaped her multidisciplinary approach, blending tradition and modernity in compelling ways. Nevertheless, Malluh believes that dedication and daily practice, rather than formal training, are the keys to true artistic mastery.

Maha Malluh started her career by making collages on canvas, incorporating local fabrics and photographs of historical buildings. Over time, her work evolved into the art of photogram – a photographic art form invented by Fox Talbot, that creates shadow-like images on light-sensitive paper without using a camera or negatives. In Malluh’s hands, the photogram becomes a poetic medium: objects of varying opacity are placed directly onto photo paper and exposed to light, creating ghostly impressions that oscillate between the abstract and the symbolic.

One of Malluh’s earliest and most intimate series, Capturing Light, 2005-2007, marked her first solo exploration of the photogram technique and debuted at Gallery O in Riyadh in 2007. Created by placing personal items – such as a child’s retainer, a stethoscope, and medical X-rays – directly onto light-sensitive paper and exposing them to light, the resulting images appear as ghostly white silhouettes suspended in deep black fields. Each object, flattened by the photographic process, retains its delicate contours: the curve of wire, the translucent sheen of plastic, the skeletal trace of a medical scan. The images are visually minimal yet rich in meaning, transforming simple silhouettes into quiet meditations on absence, memory, and care. Through Capturing Light, Malluh reclaims the visual language of everyday life and renders it as a quiet archive of emotional and cultural weight.

Across media and techniques, Malluh’s work is deeply informed by her spiritual and cultural connection to her father’s homeland, the Najd region – an elevated plateau at the heart of Saudi Arabia, known for its distinctive mud-brick architecture, patterned textiles, and historical significance. Over the past decades, she has witnessed the country’s rapid transformation, particularly under the Vision 2030 initiative, which introduced sweeping social and economic reforms, large-scale urban developments, and an embrace of global consumer culture. These shifts, while modernizing the Kingdom, have also distanced communities from long-held traditions and cultural landscapes, especially in regions like Najd, where ancestral practices and built heritage were once central to daily life.

This tension between modernization and preservation lies at the heart of Malluh’s practice. Through photograms, collages, and object-based installations, she reflects on the displacement of traditional values and the commercialization of spaces once rooted in memory. Found objects – such as cassette tapes, burned cooking pots, and personal belongings – become symbolic carriers of a fading past. By reclaiming these fragments, she narrates the stories of everyday life and reasserts the quiet beauty of what is often dismissed or forgotten. Her photograms, in particular, serve as a visual critique of material excess, framing the ‘trivial’ as powerful and enduring within a society increasingly shaped by speed, technology, and consumption.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Malluh prioritized raising her four children, which led her to pause public participation in exhibitions and travel. This period, however, deepened her engagement with domestic materials which she later reclaimed as poetic carriers of memory in her object-based installations. Malluh became best known for collecting these everyday objects from local flea markets, notably large burned pots, trays, and patterned serving dishes, which she assembles into sculptures. 

As part of her 2013 Food for Thought series, the artist created Al Muallaqat, a collection of artworks featuring wall installations of variously sized burned aluminum cooking pots traditionally used across the Arab world. The title Al Muallaqat links the installation to the sixth-century pre-Islamic Hanging Poems, which were once displayed in Mecca. This concept came to her upon discovering that many historical sites around Riyadh and the greater Najd area, were mentioned in these ancient poems. The burned pots carry stories of their past owners, much like the Hanging Poems recount the tales of pre-Islamic Arabia.

In one of her notable works from her collection Food for Thought – Tapes Series, Do You Want to Be Happy, 2012, which is part of the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF) collection, Malluh mounted vividly colored cassette tapes of hardline religious sermons – widely circulated in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and early 90s – onto vintage wooden bread trays fetched from old bakeries. These tapes, which were intentionally distributed to guide women’s moral conduct and reinforce conservative religious norms, functioned as a form of spiritual instruction rather than entertainment. In Malluh's culture, food symbolizes communal nourishment – hence the symbolic use of bread trays to present these tapes as food for thought. The juxtaposition critiques how rigid religious messages, once broadcast widely, shaped social behavior and collective identity. By repurposing the religious tapes and bread trays into visual art, Malluh invites reflection on how didactic ideas were served in domestic space and how objects once central to cultural life can be recontextualized as critical material in understanding Saudi Arabia’s transformation .

In 2024, Malluh launched Shamalat, a long-awaited cultural center in Riyadh developed in collaboration with her daughter, architect Sara Alissa. Housed in a restored mudbrick home with a contemporary addition, the space includes an exhibition hall, artist residency, and workshop area. Malluh envisions the center as an inspiring hub where young artists can gather and create.

With works that are both critical and reverent, poetic and political, Maha Malluh uses found materials to chart the cultural transformation of Saudi Arabia. Her practice confronts the rise of a disposable culture by reclaiming what has been overlooked or discarded – cassette tapes, pots, bread trays – and reconfiguring them as vessels of memory, critique, and renewal. Through this process, Malluh captures the evolving identity of the nation, reflecting on the tension between tradition and modernity, preservation and excess. Beyond preserving heritage, her work challenges viewers to reconsider their relationship with material culture. With initiatives like Shamalat, she extends this vision to future generations, ensuring that Saudi traditions evolve with thoughtfulness and intention. As she affirms in her own words, “what was once trivial may become powerful again”.

Edited by Elsie Labban

Notes

¹ https://riyadhart.sa/en/artists/maha-malluh/

² https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/maha_malluh.

³ Talass, Rawaa. 2024. Acclaimed Saudi conceptual artist Maha Malluh talks critical thinking, preserving the past and passion project

⁴ Mater, Ahmed. n.d. Development of the Saudi Art Scene from 1960

⁵ Kebbe, Natalie. n.d. Unveiling Tradition: A Conversation with Saudi Conceptual Artist Maha Malluh

⁶ https://galerie-krinzinger.at/exhibitions/translated/.

⁷ McNay, Anna. 2016. Maha Malluh: ‘I don’t see the point in creating new objects while we have a lot of waste around us’

⁸ http://edgeofarabia.com/artists/maha-malluh.

⁹ https://www.britannica.com/technology/photogram-photographic-print.

¹⁰ https://mahamalluh.com/photograms-capturing-light-series/

¹¹ https://www.selmaferiani.com/artists/36-maha-malluh/biography/.

¹² Saudi Times. 2024. Old Meets New in Saudi Arabia’s Cultural Evolution

¹³ https://mahamalluh.com/photograms-capturing-light-series/.

¹⁴ https://mahamalluh.com/photograms-tradition-and-modernity-series/.

¹⁵ https://mahamalluh.com/photograms-capturing-light-series/.

¹⁶ https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/maha_malluh.

¹⁷ McNay, Anna. 2016. Maha Malluh: ‘I don’t see the point in creating new objects while we have a lot of waste around us’

¹⁸ https://mahamalluh.com/food-for-thought-tapes/.

¹⁹ Talass, Rawaa. 2024. Acclaimed Saudi conceptual artist Maha Malluh talks critical thinking, preserving the past and passion project

²⁰ McNay, Anna. 2016. Maha Malluh: ‘I don’t see the point in creating new objects while we have a lot of waste around us’

²¹ McNay, Anna. 2016. Maha Malluh: ‘I don’t see the point in creating new objects while we have a lot of waste around us’

Sources

Talass, Rawaa. 2024. Acclaimed Saudi conceptual artist Maha Malluh talks critical thinking, preserving the past and passion project. February 15. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2460356/lifestyle.

McNay, Anna. 2016. Maha Malluh: ‘I don’t see the point in creating new objects while we have a lot of waste around us’. February 18. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.studiointernational.com/maha-malluh-interview-champagne-life-saatchi-gallery-london-saudi-arabia.

Mater, Ahmed. n.d. Development of the Saudi Art Scene from 1960. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.ahmedmater.com/ess... Riyadh. n.d. Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://riyadhart.sa/en/artists/maha-malluh/.

Kebbe, Natalie. n.d. Unveiling Tradition: A Conversation with Saudi Conceptual Artist Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.abouther.com/node/... Gallery. n.d. Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.saatchigallery.com... Malluh. n.d. Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://mahamalluh.com/photogr... of Arabia. n.d. Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. http://edgeofarabia.com/artists/maha-malluh.

Britannica. n.d. Photogram. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/tec... Times. 2024. Old Meets New in Saudi Arabia’s Cultural Evolution. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://sauditimes.org/narratives/viewpoints/old-meets-new-in-saudi-arabias-cultural-evolution/.

Custers, Desirée. 2022. Visiting Riyadh: a look at Saudi Arabia’s social and cultural transformations. March 25. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.stimson.org/2022/v... Malluh. n.d. Capturing Light. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://mahamalluh.com/photograms-capturing-light-series/.

—. n.d. Tradition & Modernity. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://mahamalluh.com/photogr... Gallery. n.d. Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.saatchigallery.com... Feriani. n.d. Maha Malluh. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://www.selmaferiani.com/a... Malluh. n.d. Food for Thought. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://mahamalluh.com/food-fo... Krinzinger. 2015. Translated. March. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://galerie-krinzinger.at/exhibitions/translated/.