Geological Encounters reflects the philosophy-in-practice of Jordanian artist and architect Ammar Khammash. Working across disciplines, Khammash engages directly with the terrains of Jordan, responding to their geological, social, and cultural conditions.
Central to his practice is the act of encounter. Through observation, documentation, and intervention, Khammash responds to the discoveries that emerge from his movement across the landscape. His work approaches geology as a living system shaped by mutliple actors, economic, social, biological, and archaeological, revealing the land as a complex, layered entity.
At any site, Khammash listens before he creates. His works evolve through a sustained dialogue with place, reflecting both a deep sensitivity to context and an attentiveness to process that carries through to their final forms.
The terracotta creatures presented in this exhibition emerge from precisely such a dialogue. They respond not only to the materiality of clay, but also to its extraction and transformation within contemporary systems of production and consumption. Drawing on the mass-produced planters found along roadsides across Jordan, Khammash intervenes in both form and process. Through this engagement, he creates hybrid objects, part vessel, part organism that appear to have metamorphosed from within the very conditions of their making.