I have been commissioned by the Nour Festival 2012 to create site-specific installations across the Leighton House Museum. I had two projects on display: Mourning Hall in the 'Arab Hall', and Translations, which was a series of objects in different rooms of the House.
Mourning
Hall is a reinterpretation of the 'Arab Hall'. this
work was a response to the lack of mourning spaces in Syria during the uprising.
Temporary burial and mourning rituals were
denied for the families of those killed by the regime. Funeral services were
forcefully cancelled, and people attempting to hold them outside churches and
mosques would be arrested. As a result, new collective, spatial, and visual
practices emerged. Having to escape the regime’s repression, people resorted to
midnight burials, often in orchards, public and private gardens, and—in the
case of massacres—mass graves. Instead of the usually-observed three days of
mourning, paying respect to the families of those killed became a speedy act so
as to avoid recognition of their homes. Acts of mourning would turn into
protests, and funerals resulted in more funerals.
Mourning
Hall
is informed by both these emerging and missing practices. Research for this
piece involved excavating the video archive of night-time demonstrations that
were held as an act of grievance over the dead and celebration of the
uprisings. Each of the Fifteenth-to-Seventeenth-century hand painted Damascene
tiles in the Arab Hall now holds a name written in Arabic calligraphy of a woman,
man, or child who was killed in the last two years. Let us finally declare our mourning
over those unjustly killed.The show 'Translations' includes a collection in which I use Arabic language to create objects and furniture, while looking at the possible transformations of that text, in relation to its meaning, and function of object itself.
The show was on from Nov 5 - Dec 5, 2012 at the Leighton House Museum
This work was kindly funded by The Arts Council and the Nour Festival
