On our visit to Athr Gallery, we spent the day with its founders, Hamza Serafi and Mohamed Hafez, and also with Nasser Al-Salem, an emerging young Saudi artist. Nasser has witnessed the change in his country and the effect it has had on his family's trade: tent making. Nasser expresses the disappearance of his family’s trade through a unique art piece titled Zamzam.

We discussed art in Saudi and learnt about one of the oldest Arab art forms, calligraphy. We were introduced to the history of calligraphy and the material. Nasser emphasized the importance of the quality of paper and organically made ink. He also explained that galleries tend to turn down art pieces that are made using chemical inks. The reason for that is that chemical inks tend to fade over time, while organically made inks last much longer. This explains why old Quranic scripts have survived all these years.