Basmah Felemban at CONDO
by Shayhana AlGhareeb
As part of CONDO 2026, Saudi-based ATHR gallery is hosted by Union Pacific in London. Featured in Union Pacific’s group exhibition is artist Basmah Felemban, with artworks The Fable of Crossing the River by Feeling the Pebble and Voyage 05.
About the Artist
Born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Basmah Felemban (b. 1993) is a graphic designer and multi-disciplinary artist whose work is inspired by Islamic arts, digital design, and geometrical and geological elements. In her artworks, Felemban draws on various islamic manuscripts on cosmographies, mythologies as well as the sciences and imagination using contemporary tools and methodologies like video games and digital mapping in her drawings. Her work also explores her own personal identity, following the mysteries of her family lineage and heritage. Beautiful is her use of imagination to rewrite identity. From her first debut in the British museum’s “Journey To The Heart of Islam: Hajj” (2012) Exhibition to her first solo exhibition in ATHR gallery Consecrated Networks (2024), Basmah’s artworks and extraordinary practice are anchored in her belief in art as a tool for expanding human understanding of the self and the world.
The Fable of Crossing the River by Feeling the Pebble, 2025 Work on paper 110 x 225 cm
In this incredible artwork of “The fable of crossing the river by feeling the pebbles”, Felemban uses cosmological drawings to tell what seems to be a traditional and ancient folkloric story of The Jirry Tribe of Catfish. This piece represents tribe members of catfish roaming valleys of the world who survey and mine the land for lost data. We see redrawn landscapes and maps. Felemban explores the connections between her Indonesian ancestry and Saudi identity through the mythical creatures of catfish, a huge asset in Indonesia but also found in Wadi Hanifa in Saudi Arabia. To bridge the gaps in family stories and factual research, Felemban experiments in her art with digital tools and draws on mythical creatures and islamic manuscripts and cosmographies.
Voyage 05, 2025 (AI generated image, print transfer on plywood) 39.0 x 137.0 cm
This painting is part of a series where Felemban produces paintings using AI to generate landscapes and biblical events from the metaphors, symbols, and ideas that come up in her research. It presents a terrain that combines histories and futuristic imaginaries.
