While traveling through the Empty Quarter desert in the southern Arabian Peninsula, Al Qadiri encountered the Calotropis Procera—a tall, bright green plant rich in legend and history. Also known by its biblical name, Apple of Sodom, the plant secretes a toxic milky sap believed to cause blindness.
Throughout history, human interactions with the natural world have yielded both pain and discovery, from nourishment to poison. The Guardian draws from this natural form as a symbol of the complex relationship between fact and myth, perception and belief. Drawing on both historical and folkloric narratives, The Guardian speaks to a broader condition of blindness—physical, psychological, and societal—in which people refuse to believe the reality of images they are confronted with.