Ashes of the Arabian’s Pearl
France
2025
Between the end of Sultan Qābūs’s very successful reign and the start of Haïtham’s, Ashes of the Arabian’s Pearl (2021-23) focuses on the new economic, social and political trajectories of the Sultanate of Oman. Through the lens of development, Valentin Valette closely observes the urgent need for economic diversification in the face of petrol and gas resources depletion. He pays particular attention to the main actors of this development: the foreign workers and their employers. He also mobilises a social-sciences concept, the tomason, to evoke the remnants of the past. Ashes of the Arabian’s Pearl adopts a multidisciplinary approach, combining archives and medium-format photographs.
Portfolio
About the artist
Valentin Valette was born in 1994 in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region in France. A French author and photographer of Algerian descent, he is also studying for a doctorate in visual anthropology. He is based between the Pyrenees, the Maghreb and the Persian Gulf.