Mohammad Alfaraj: The Heart Is a Birds Nest, The Brain Is a Spider Web

First institutional solo exhibition in Europe by Mohammad Alfaraj, bringing together new commissions with recent works that reimagine narratives shared across species. About Dates: 29 September – 22 November 2026 Venue: Delfina Foundation Opening: Monday, 28 September 2026, 18:00–21:00 Conceived in response to Delfina Foundation's domestic setting, where the artist was in residence in 2018 and 2023, the exhibition unfolds across installation, drawing, photography, film, and sculpture. Among the most distinctive voices of a new generation of artists from Saudi Arabia, Alfaraj draws on social rituals, folklore, and everyday life to construct immersive narratives in which humans, animals, insects, and plants become companions, neighbours, and family. For Alfaraj, emotions, memories, and the stories we tell ourselves are woven from different threads: some lived, some imagined. The exhibition's title captures this poetic logic. The heart, like a nest, is a place of care, intimacy and belonging. The brain, like a spider web, is a place of complexity and entanglement. Alfaraj imagines home as a boundless, shared ecology, revealing unexpected relationships that can be ordinary, humorous, and even profound. As the artist notes, 'I consider home and family in the widest sense. The insects are my long-lost relatives who want to live off me, the cows are my loud neighbours that I have "beef" with, and birds always ask about me without wanting anything. This exhibition is a homecoming to Delfina which provided the nurturing soil from which I, and many artists, grew taller.' The exhibition highlights Alfaraj's inventive, spiritual, and allegorical practice. Bringing together disparate materials, narratives and more-than-human perspectives into poetic encounters, the works invite viewers to reconsider what constitutes family and home. In doing so, the exhibition acknowledges contemporary social and environmental realities while holding open the possibility of hope. Read more Toggle Sculpture Installation Drawing Painting Mixed media Film / Video Photography