Lawrie Shabibi is delighted to announce the first-ever solo exhibition for artist, architect and researcher Dima Srouji titled Charts for a Resurrection.
Srouji’s work lies in the expanded context of interdisciplinary research projects. It acts as a form of political commentary and as a place-making or un-making tool. Srouji collaborates closely with archaeologists, anthropologists, glass blowers and sound designers to develop her architectural projects, installations, product designs, and writing. Working across a diverse range of media including glass, text, archival materials, maps, and film, Srouji questions ideas of identity and globalisation through historic strata and space, in connection to the spirit of a place and displacement. Interested in the ground, objects, displacement, restitution, forgeries, and living archives, Srouji looks for potential ruptures in the ground where imaginary liberation is possible.
The exhibition is conceived as two distinct spaces, the larger “terrain” and the more intimate “chapel”, comprising installations and archival prints that intertwine historical artefacts with imaginary archaeological sites.
In the larger space, stone carved windows with coloured glass inlay imagine future archaeological monuments in the Palestinian landscape constructed with the traditional technique of “Qamariya” windows, often found in mosques and churches in Palestine, Yemen, and Egypt.
Two nine-square grid installations mirror one another- one as the surface of the ground and the other as subterranean spaces concealed beneath it: a wall-mounted grid revealing partially excavated glass vessels as if an excavation is underway, while a floor-based grid reveals complex strata including structures from the past, present and future of Palestine. Embedded within are familiar structures such as the plans for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock – a vision of how an archaeological site in Palestine might appear in 300 years’ time.
Maternal Labour, a series of prints on aluminium, celebrates the real women often labelled as “basket girls” who were hired by western institutions in the 20th century to excavate the land that they owned and cultivated for centuries to extract valuable artefacts that were then displaced.
Composed of suspended hand-blown glass sculptures, the title The Red River refers to the Belus River, which some historical narratives claim was the source of the sand for the first glass objects. Red refers to the water’s colour, polluted by nearby industry, including the military factory Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. This river features prominently in personal stories such as that of Srouji’s displaced grandmother-and in the larger memory of Palestine, part of the artist’s projects with archaeologists, anthropologists, and artisans in exploring cultural heritage, history, and memory in Palestine.
A more intimate darkened, apsed space evokes a “chapel”, adorned with floating replicas of archeological vessels that were historically used as gifts to the dead for their afterlives. Here, amidst the unfolding tragedy in Palestine, the chapel serves as a sanctuary for mourning and meditation, fostering healing and envisioning the afterlives of the departed while imagining the future of a liberated Palestine through its fictional archaeological artefacts.
Press release courtesy of Lawrie Shabibi
Image: Dima Srouji. Installation view of ‘Charts for a Resurrection’, 7 May – 6 July 2024, Dubai. Photography by Ismail Noor of Seeing Things. Image courtesy of the artist and Lawrie Shabibi
