Ordnung als Haltung – Teil II
Ein persönlicher Essay zwischen Schweizer Modularität, stiller Kunst und einer Begegnung mit Badr Ali – und warum ich sie in Saudi-Arabien neu verstanden habe. Das Interview oder Acht Fragen über Raum, Zurückhaltung und Ordnung.
Von Antje-Katrin Schaniel – Text und Fotos
Badr Ali, Space is never neutral in your work. When does a space become meaningful to you – and when does it remain mere architecture?
Space is more meaningful to me when there are elements in place that make it feel continuous and unlimited. In my painting practice, I’m interested in creating a sense of expanse to the point where the framing of the canvas can almost be forgotten. That interest continues when I’m drawing, but it’s suggestive. Gestures often carry-on beyond the edges of the surface, or are abruptly cut off while still implying continuation. I’m less concerned with literal space and more drawn to metaphorical or implied space that invites the viewer to imagine what exists beyond what is shown. For me, a space becomes meaningful when it opens up this kind of engagement, when it allows the image to feel unfinished or unresolved in a productive way. This leaves room for the viewer to determine how the image continues, how lines might connect, or where the space might lead. When space functions only as a contained structure, without this sense of extension or possibility, it feels closer to architecture; a kind of skeleton meant to hold something else up.
Many of your works are built around repetition. Is repetition, for you, a form of meditation – or a form of memory?
Repetition for me functions much more like a meditative process than a tool for memory. Repeating an action long enough can induce a kind of trance, where familiar forms begin to loosen and transform into new patterns. There’s something similar to the childhood experience of repeating a word until it starts to lose its meaning and turn into an arbitrary sound. Repetition doesn’t necessarily produce sameness, but rather opens up slippage and change. When working with life models or dancers, I often make several drawings of the exact same pose or gesture in a short span of time. Through rapid repetition, the process becomes less rigid, and I start mapping more fluid relationships between what I’m observing and what I’m marking. Often the later drawings are more interesting than the first; like making pancakes, where the first one rarely turns out appealing. I tend to trust what emerges from this meditative state. It feels more immediate and authentic to me. Memory, on the other hand, can be overly dependent on past perceptions and is often shaped by bias or misremembering.
Saudi Arabia is undergoing profound transformation. How do you protect silence in your work amid the speed of development?
I tend to think less in terms of transformation and more in terms of visibility. There’s a heightened global attention on Saudi Arabia right now, particularly within the creative industries and rightly so. That increased visibility creates an understandable amount pressure to respond quickly and visibly. I’m very aware of this shift, especially as someone who divides their time between Berlin and Jeddah over the course of the year, a lot of support and platforming for the Arts have been supercharged with increased profiling of artists. I don’t work in response to trends, and I’m not easily influenced by the speed and noise of my surroundings. I’m quite selective about what I allow to affect my practice. Much of what I produce functions like a non-verbal diary where things are processed quietly and intuitively rather than reactively.
Your art feels controlled, yet never rigid. How do you find the balance between structure and freedom?
There is an undeniable comfort for me in maintaining a certain level of control when working with movement. I often work with smaller pieces of paper to generate drawings that later act as raw material for larger works. The scale gives me more control over something that is constantly shifting and difficult to hold onto. Drawing allows me to work very quickly and intuitively. I can respond in real time without filtering or over-deciding. I don’t have to determine what something is yet; I can simply react to what’s happening in front of me. That immediacy is important, especially when I’m working with movement, because I’m not trying to capture a finished form. I’m trying to catch something that is already disappearing. For me, control exists in the parameters I set at the beginning, such as the size of the paper or the decision to work in short bursts. Those constraints help anchor something that is otherwise very free. Freedom comes through the act of drawing itself, through rhythm, repetition and responsiveness. Control then returns when those drawings are revisited, edited, reconstructed, or collaged into later works, and freedom cycles back in through how they are reassembled and translated into new forms. This balance isn’t something I consciously plan, but rather something that has emerged through the process over time. I think of control as the act of capturing fragments of information in the moment, while freedom comes from how that information is later reinterpreted, recycled, and allowed to evolve into something else.
If order is a cultural language: Which kind of order interests you more – the visible or the invisible one?
I’m more interested in the invisible and what’s suggested rather than prescribed, and what only becomes visible through the viewer’s engagement. For me, invisible structures allow space for individual interpretation, where meaning isn’t fixed but formed through looking. This also reflects how I experience art myself. When I visit galleries or museums, I try not to read the wall text first. If a show holds my attention, I’ll often go through it multiple times, allowing my own impressions and associations to develop before engaging with any contextual explanation ; and sometimes I never read the text at all. For me, that’s part of the pleasure of looking. I don’t think there’s a correct way to read a work. We’re not graded on interpretation. What matters is the relationship formed between the viewer and what’s being observed.
I had the impression that your works do not try to prove anything. Is restraint a conscious artistic choice for you?
I make work the same way someone journals, notes and illustrations to myself . It’s how I process daily experiences, rather than prove a particular idea. I don’t publish or show everything I make in a given year, which feels important to me, especially in a moment where constant visibility and output seem to be the norm. I’ll admit I sometimes worry about sounding unhinged when I talk about drawing as a way of communicating with the subconscious, but that’s genuinely how I experience it. Restraint becomes more present through dialogue, particularly in my relationships with curators over time. I enjoy developing connections with curators I feel a kindred understanding with. I see curators as artists in their own right, whose medium is the artists they work with, and I value that exchange deeply. I often think of it like a conductor working with a musician. On my own, I can get overly excited about a particular tune until it turns into erratic noise. Through collaboration, that noise gets refined into something more legible and shareable, without losing its original energy.
When your works are viewed fifty years from now: What do you hope people will feel – before they understand what they are seeing?
I hope people don’t feel pressured to understand the work immediately, or feel the need to rely too heavily on me to form that understanding. Instead, I hope they’re able to encounter the work on their own terms and form relationships with it through their own lived experiences. Ideally, the first feeling would be a sense of openness rather than explanation. If the work can encourage viewers to slow down to trust their intuition and arrive at their own realizations, that feels far more meaningful to me than clarity or consensus. If something I’ve made helps push someone toward that kind of personal engagement or reflection, even before they fully understand what they’re seeing, that would already feel deeply rewarding and validating to me.
And finally: Why did you choose to collaborate with the Swiss family-owned company USM?
I was approached by Gaël Charbau and Basmah Falamban, a curator and artist who were already familiar with my work, my studio practice, and the philosophies that shape how I approach painting. They proposed this collaboration as an experiment, and that openness immediately appealed to me. I had never worked in this format before. What was intriguing to was the parallel I began to see between my own process and the modular logic of USM. There is a shared structure in both where begin with a core or base, and from there the outcome is shaped entirely by your own narrative and choice. That sense of modularity and adaptability felt very familiar to how I think about building images and systems within my work. As a painter, my work has usually existed in relatively intimate settings, whether in the studio or within exhibition spaces. There’s often an unspoken code in galleries where distance is maintained and interaction is limited. With this collaboration, the work shifts into a completely different context. The pieces are distributed throughout a site, placed in public spaces, offices, and studios. They’re meant to be touched, used, moved, and lived with. I find that shift exciting. People will sit on the work, gather around it, have conversations, and engage with it as part of their everyday routines. Being able to see the work function in that way, and having the support and openness of everyone involved in the collaboration, has made the experience incredibly rewarding for me.
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