11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

reflect lived experience of peoples who have lost their cultural heritage. For example, for Standing by the ruins of Aleppo 2021, Awartani used adobe to replicate the courtyard of Syria’s Great Mosque of Aleppo that was bombed and severely damaged during the ongoing civil war. For When the dust of conflict settles 2023, which also explored Syria’s built and cultural heritage, Awartani worked with refugee stonemasons to reproduce ruined fragments of churches, mosques, citadels and temples. Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your broken bones 2024 was composed of Ayurvedic hand-dyed silks infused with healing and medicinal herbs — a craft she learnt in Kerala, India — with torn and carefully darned components corresponding to heritage sites in countries that have faced cultural destruction, including Syria, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Afghanistan. Most recently, Gaza was added to this mapping. Awartani’s emphasis on handmade materials and collaborations with artisans are significant aspects of her work. The strength and complexity of Standing by the ruins lies in its evocation of destruction and violence alongside a careful and reverential act of creation and revival. Hope and resilience are implied through the sharing of communal heritage and knowledge, and the acknowledgement of collective memory, instigating a process of healing and mending through working with the hands. For Awartani, craft was never an inferior art form as often regarded in the West, but rather a traditional knowledge that provides a means to rebuild and construct a future of greater unity and understanding. ABIGAIL BERNAL Standing by the ruins (installation view, Rabat Biennale, Morocco 2019) / Compressed earth / 450 × 1130cm / Image courtesy: The artist NOTES 1 The first version of Standing by the ruins 2019 was made in Morocco as a site-specific work that was subsequently destroyed. This initial version was made with different coloured earth. In constructing a subsequent version in Saudi Arabia, Awartani used chemical pigment to recapture one of the shades of earth not available outside Morocco. 2 In ruin poetry, the statement ‘standing by the ruins’ preceded a period of introspective melancholy triggered by an encounter with the remnants of an abandoned or destroyed settlement. See Paul Cooper, ‘The ancient poems that explain today’, BBC , 21 August 2018, <bbc.com/culture/ article/20180820-the- 6th-century-poems- making-a-comeback>, viewed July 2024. Awartani often draws on poetry and classical learning and has cited Sufi poetry — in particular by Ibn Arabi, Rumi, Hafez, and Mahmoud Darwish — as an influence. Her installation Listen to my words 2018 combined embroidered silk panels with audible verses by radical Islamic and pre-Islamic female poets. 3 ArteEast, ‘Artist spotlight with Dana Awartani’, Arte East: The Global Platform for Middle East Arts , 3 January 2023, <arteeast.org/programs/ dana-awartani/>, viewed July 2024. BORN 1987, JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA LIVES+WORKS IN JEDDAH+ NEWYORKCITY, UNITEDSTATES Dana Awartani’s Standing by the ruins 2022 is an intricate floor installation of 439 handmade adobe bricks arranged according to the principles of unity integral to six-fold geometry. Fabricated from three distinct shades of earth, the bricks create a refined pattern suggesting abstract flowers, stars and other elements from the natural world. 1 The installation takes its name from the Arabic trope of ‘ruin poetry’, founded in pre-Islamic times, which has seen a revival among recent generations of artists reacting to the desolation of war and state of violence across the Middle East. 2 Adobe building is an ancient practice shared across numerous cultures, including in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and Awartani learnt directly from artisans whose families have been making these bricks for generations. In creating them, she deliberately removed one essential component — the hay that binds and tempers the bricks, preventing them from showing cracks and fissures when dry. As a result, while her bricks retain their integrity as shapes, the visual impact is one evocative of the beauty and devastation of ruins. Through this simple but profound gesture, Awartani instils her work with contemporary meaning. As she comments on her practice more broadly: ‘It’s about incorporating the essence and techniques of the craft or materials but innovating to present them in an alternative way’. 3 Awartani was raised in Saudi Arabia by her Palestinian parents, and she has matrilineal Syrian heritage. She was classically trained in the complex patterns of Islamic geometry — a fusion of art, mathematics and spirituality. The artist’s larger installations often begin as meticulous geometric drawings on handmade paper, using materials like gouache and walnut ink, that illuminate her formal and conceptual process. Many of her works DANAAWARTANI ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 56 — 57