Mohammad Alfaraj opens his first European solo exhibition in London: “The heart is a bird’s nest, the brain is a spider web” at Delfina Foundation

The exhibition “The heart is a bird’s nest, the brain is a spider web” opens today in London — the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe by Saudi artist Mohammad Alfaraj, as Artnet News notes in its guide to the season’s most important London exhibitions. The show runs from 29 September to 22 November 2026 at Delfina Foundation.

Alfaraj, born in 1993 and based in the Al-Ahsa desert oasis in Saudi Arabia, is one of the most distinctive voices of the new generation of Saudi artists. His international reputation has been rising fast, following several prizes won at Art Basel last year and his first institutional show at Dubai’s Jameel Arts Centre, which closed in January this year.

The exhibition brings together new commissions with recent works spanning installation, drawing, photography, film and sculpture. Drawing on Saudi folklore and everyday rituals, Alfaraj imagines people, animals, insects and plants as companions and family — a world where emotions, memories and stories are woven like threads: the heart as a nest, a place of care and belonging; the brain as a spider’s web, a place of complexity and entanglement.

The exhibition was conceived specifically for the domestic setting of Delfina Foundation, where Alfaraj was artist in residence in 2018 and 2023 — and it coincides with a site-specific commission at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, his first solo outing in a French institution, opening in October.

Alfaraj works with local materials such as palm leaves and dates, found objects and refuse, turning them into capsules of time and memory; his practice stretches from film and photography to sculpture and writing.