Ahmed Mater (B 1979) - Salam (2026)

Salam (Peace) (2026) is a work of quiet conceptual precision from Ahmed Mater — one of the most significant contemporary artists to emerge from Saudi Arabia and a central figure in the generation that has redefined the relationship between Arabian visual culture and the international art world. The image presents a pixelated face — a simple, pixellated smile — rendered in the negative space of a dense red grid, the pattern formed by the arrangement of plastic caps from toy guns. The word Salam, Arabic for "peace," is written not in letters but in the material itself: the composition is the message, and the message is constructed from objects designed to simulate violence.

Salam is part of Mater's Guncaps series — one of the most celebrated bodies of work from his early career, in which he collected the plastic caps of toy pistols widely sold across Saudi Arabia, objects saturated with the iconography of American cowboy culture and its global export, and arranged them to spell out words of profound cultural significance: Peace, Freedom, Ray of Light. The gesture is simultaneously subversive and generous — taking a symbol of Western cultural dominance and repurposing it, literally, to say something else, to assert a different set of values through the same material vocabulary.

The 37-layer archival pigment printing process — one of the most technically demanding in fine art printmaking — reproduces the texture and depth of Mater's original mixed-media artwork with extraordinary fidelity, the layers of ink building a surface that carries the physical complexity of the original. Printed on Somerset Tub Sized White 410gsm — an exceptionally heavy, premium cotton rag paper — the work has a substantial, archival presence suited to the ambition of the image.

One of three prints from the Guncaps series (Salam / Peace, Hurriya / Freedom, Ray / Ray of Light), produced in a strict edition of 25 and signed by the artist. Mater's work is held in major international collections and has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the British Museum, and institutions across the Middle East, Europe, and North America.