ArtDayME: In December 2023, Johnny Depp came to Saudi Arabia to attend the Red Sea Film Festival, and his presence in this country was widely reflected in the world media.

The Hollywood superstar, who is also a painter, visited Ahmed Mater's studio in Jax District during his trip to Saudi Arabia and met with this famous Saudi artist.

During this meeting, he was fascinated by Ahmed Mater's work "Peace" and talked about this work with Mater.

Ahmed Mater is an established artist widely recognised as one of the most important voices of contemporary Saudi Arabia. As a former physician, Mater’s earlier works are heavily informed by his formal training and traces of that experience can be observed in many of his earlier works, in the form of incorporating X-ray imagery in his Illuminations pieces. His life and work have each been shaped and punctuated by events of unprecedented social reform, pivotal experiences which inform his work. Working across photography, film, sculpture and performance he documents and analyzes these rapid developments through his research-based practice. Of particular interest to Mater are the forgotten narratives and unofficial histories of Saudi Arabia’s past, present and future. These are consistent subject matters in his practice, which often engages the forces of propulsion and attraction to articulate the artist’s perspective onto societal conditions. Forging an ongoing, complex mapping of the Kingdom. A hallmark of Mater’s artworks is that they are simultaneously politically engaged and expressively ambitious. These twin aspirations coalesce in refined, idiosyncratic forms.