Loading ...Arabic Calligraphy Explores Identity and Loss
The London-based spatial designer Dia Batal uses Arabic calligraphy as a vehicle to explore notions of identity, memory and migration. In her latest exhibition at Mosaic Rooms, a non-profit center of contemporary Arab culture and art, her stylized script is brought to life through various mediums, from silkscreen prints, to embroidery and works in metal.
“My style developed with time as I refine the details. I constantly do this. The fact that it’s so free in form helps me redefine it, as the materials I use and context change,” Batal tells The Creators Project.
On Being, 2015. Powder coated metal, edition of 7.
Her multimedia works make connections between fragmented histories of loss and displacement. The exhibition title,Tracing Landscapes, was inspired by a print based on the names of towns and villages in Palestine before 1948—one of the first pieces Batal created for the show. “As this work progressed, and I started working on other pieces, it became clear that what I was doing was literally tracing over landscapes that have been altered, including people, narratives and places,” she says in an interview.
In another piece, an animation created in collaboration with Maya Chami, she weaves the story of her own grandmother’s exile from Palestine. The concepts of home and belonging, and how these are defined and internalized, are also central in I am from there, a metal object inspired by compasses and other navigational tools.
Source: thecreatorsproject.vice.com