Artists

Dana Awartani

Press release

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 years, 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.