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Transient spaces, hotel lobbies & airports

By the end of 1981, Samer signed with the Jeddah-based Rochan Gallery, and was commissioned to create murals for the newly established King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh which was set to open in 1983.

Postcards created by Samer Tabbaa, undated.

In transient spaces, I made sketches, these sketches grew into sculptures, these sculptures were placed in transient spaces.

– Samer Tabbaa

Inspired by the ‘postcards’ he pencils in during his liminal time in waiting rooms and hotel lobbies, Samer designed a bronze mural for the King Khalid International Airport. The mural, comprising 9 squares, echoes the veins of airport hallways and terminals taking travellers to different destinations.

Samer Tabbaa posing with his bronze work at King Khalid International Airport bronze sculpture, (2020).

Samer experimented with printmaking using a chisel, hammer and rough sandpaper. He maneuvered his way onto a zinc sheet the only way a sculptor knows how, by carving into its depths and manipulating its surface. On it, Samer chiseled impressions of masses, akin to mountain peaks in a desert aerial view, floating on delicate lines flowing like the shifting sands of dunes.