Dana Awartani: Art, Heritage, and Cultural Preservation

Dana Awartani's art explores cultural heritage, tradition, and destruction in the Middle East. Her work highlights the fragility of heritage sites and the intersection of modern art with social damage.

” When individuals chat concerning heritage sites in places where they’re from, it’s not just brick and mortar or stone structures,” she claims. Particularly in the Middle East, we still live with our heritage., in its old homes, or in Syria and Palestine, people will certainly still rest in the coliseums and have shisha.”

Micro and Macro: Awartani’s Artistic Approach

“Among the important things that I really enjoy regarding Dana’s method is its ability to move in between the micro and the macro,” Carver tells The Art Paper. “Dana’s work subjects all the structures, definitions and frailties within the natural products she makes use of, and after that moves from that to the macro of our shared social heritage. In the art globe, modern art is being created at the very same time as social damage is occurring. It really feels extremely essential to represent that sense of collapse in between the old and modern at the Venice Biennale.”

Still from Dana Awartani’s I went away and neglected you. A while ago I kept in mind. I remembered I ‘d forgotten you. I was dreaming (2017 ), performed in a conventional residence in Jeddah’s Al Balad neighbourhood

Her job remains to oscillate between these 2 posts, and though she claims it is prematurely to state what she will produce Saudi Arabia’s Venice pavilion, she hints that it will certainly be notified by social heritage and the ideas associated with it.

Waiting the damages (2025) was the second job of this type that she has made; at the initial Diriyah Biennale, in Riyadh in 2021, she re-staged the tiled pattern of the Grand Mosque of Aleppo, which suffered extensive damages in the Syrian Civil Battle. For both items, Awartani dealt with conventional mud-brick makers in Saudi Arabia, asking to leave out the hay that usually binds the bricks together so that splits develop throughout the pattern, emphasising the vulnerability of the websites.

Heritage and Conflict in Awartani’s Work

“When individuals talk concerning heritage websites in locations where they’re from, it’s not just block and mortar or rock structures,” she claims. Awartani was born and raised in Jeddah, to a Saudi mother and a Palestinian father. Her job has reacted to current dispute in the Center East. “Dana’s work exposes all the appearances, meanings and frailties within the natural products she makes use of, and after that relocates from that to the macro of our shared social heritage. In the art globe, modern art is being created at the very same time as social devastation is taking location.

Awartani was born and elevated in Jeddah, to a palestinian father and a saudi mother. Her work has reacted to current conflict in the center East. As part of her show previously this year at the Arnolfini, in Bristol, she re-made the tiled floor of the Hamam al-Sammara, a bathhouse in Gaza said to day from the 14th century. The building was reportedly destroyedby Israeli strikes on the conclave in 2023.

Cultural Heritage and Craft Traditions

Awartani is a leading figure within the current generation of Saudi artists. Frequently working in cooperation with craftsmens, she focuses on cultural heritage and craft customs– several of which she herself has actually trained in.

She got a bachelor’s degree from Central St Martins in London however states that while there, she resisted individuals’s assumptions concerning the type of work she would certainly make, as an Arab lady artist. She subsequently studied Islamic geometry at the Royal prince’s School of Typical Arts and after that undertook an ijaza– an official Islamic certification– in Turkey, finding out the strategy of illumination.

Carver, a widely known number in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, is the supervisor of Art Jameel, the philanthropic structure that looks after the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and Hayy Jameel in Jeddah. Alkhudairi services contemporary art compensations in AlUla, the social and visitor location in Saudi Arabia’s northwest, while likewise seeking other curatorial and research study projects.