Saudi Arabia

Dana Awartani’s new commission collapses deep time with the immediacy of the now. Evoking the form of an archaeological site, viewers traverse a mosaic floor of patterns and motifs found in multiple heritage sites across the Arab world, all under threat, in real time, through man-made war and violence.

The work comprises thousands of tiles, each handmade in variously hued natural muds and clays, in collaboration with Saudi-based master craftspeople from the Arab world, Afghanistan and South Asia. The process draws on vernacular adobe brick-building techniques found across West Asia and beyond, but eschews binding agents allowing the tiles to crack as they dry.

The work is as steeped in meticulous process as it is in the dazzle of swirling geometric, floral and faunal motifs; monumental yet human-scale, it takes over the pavilion, immersing the viewer while embracing the material’s fragility.

References are to mosaics found in heritage sites in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, such as floors of mosques, churches and synagogues, as well as secular, domestic and public sites of deep historical and material significance. This imagined terrain poetically highlights the urgency of protecting and preserving the cultural legacies of the Arab world — reflecting that it is the shared role of custodian that defines us, that defines humanity itself.