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Open: Tue-Sat 11am-6pm and by appointment

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Artist: Dana Awartani

For her first exhibition with Lisson, Dana Awartani builds on significant recent presentations at Arnolfini, Towner Eastbourne and the Venice Biennale, with a new body of floor-based sculptures and paintings on paper. Four installations continue the series of mosaics made for the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 61st Venice Biennale (ends 22 November), entitled May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones. These iterations of her handmade, brick tile floors restore now lost decorative mosaics from former sites of worship or architectural importance that were destroyed over the past three or four year, continuing her exploration and preservation of destroyed sites of cultural heritage in the wider Arab world.

Working in collaboration with stonemasons and artisans of Afghan, Pakistani and Syrian descent from a mountainside studio near Riyadh, Awartani redrew and recast the geometric floor patterns in three colours of clay, which were harvested from three different locations in the region, before being dried and baked by the sun. The knowledge and traditions encapsulated in her laboriously handmade recreations constitute a bridge to the past and an act of protection and perpetuation of a dying art form. By researching multiple sites harking all the way back to the origins of mosaic in ancient Mesapotamia (largely corresponding to present-day Iraq), the fragmentary nature of this medium reflects not only those previous and complex colonial entanglements, but also the present day shattering of shared cultures and histories. Despite all of this, Awartani posits that these shards can still be remade and recombined into a unified, aesthetic composition.

From a dozen ink and gouache reconstructions of the designs that were displayed as one combined installation in Venice, Awartani has selected four floor pieces for this show: namely the Byzantine Church in Khirbet Midras (latter-day Israel), Hisham’s Palace in Jericho (Palestine), the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (Palestine) and the Kursi Monastery in Golan Heights (Syria), all demolished through bombardments by the Israel military. The reclamation of these significant sites of cultural heritage also amounts to a plea for the preservation of memory, craftsmanship and the people who helped construct these temples, basilicas and holy spaces – amounting to a kind of “quiet resistance,” to use Awartani’s words. Her original title for the series May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones is now joined by a subtitle for this show from the same Arabic poem by Abu Nuwas (762–813CE), Give and be generous with all your hand possesses, referring to the sharing of knowledge that went into this body of work, constructed as it was by the labour and skill of ‘many hands’. Indeed, by spanning the fifth to the 21st centuries, the original, mostly Christian, Byzantine-era mosaics would have been seen and used by worshippers from Islamic, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths and been witness to the rise and fall of Ottoman and Roman emperors alike.

The paradox of the man-made and the man-destroyed is also evident upstairs in Let me mend your broken bones (2024) composed of naturally dyed silk fabrics, handmade in Kerala in south India. The abstract panels are infused and coloured with ayurvedic herbs and medicinal spices, but are then slashed and disrupted by holes and tears that correspond to mapped locations in the Middle East that were subjected to sustained violence or destruction. The artist then mends these punctures through a healing process of darning, just as she has re-carved a Palmyran pillar, which also recalls the silenced traditions and epochs of beauty that are unthinkingly erased by moments of violence.

all images © the gallery and the artist(s)