Using tapestry, tassels, and steel as a metaphor for the malleability of identity, Nour Jaouda’s first solo show in London, “Where, if not faraway, is my place?” layers silhouettes of architectural elements from Cairo (where the artist, who is of Libyan descent, grew up) into objects that marry elements of painting, collage, and sculpture. The artist hand-dyes cotton and canvas cutouts, on which she traces motifs like outlines of the wooden latticework of traditional mashrabia windows or of the arches that decorate the domed interiors of mosques. She suspends the fabrics from twisted steel rods, repurposed directly from old gates and fences in Cairo, to create standing structures that invoke portals to an unnamed elsewhere.
As long as our tears are songs when we cry them, 2023, a body of nine cement slates mounted on the wall, presents delicate organic forms that appear to drip and congeal, extending the artist’s experimentation with materiality. Other fabric works take their inspiration from the Islamic prayer mat, an object that can be rolled up, packed away, and unfurled to transform space from mundane to sacred. Jaouda hangs the textiles so that they protrude from the wall. Rather than two-dimensional rugs, they suggest doorways into the artist’s memory, refreshing the prayer mat’s well-worn cultural symbolism.
Jaouda’s reconfiguration of cultural signifiers manages to evoke a sense of place without getting into specifics. Rather, it attempts to coax into existence a new geography—the illusive “faraway” of the show’s title—as a site where the artist can reconcile with her own sense of liminality and lack of belonging.
— Lara El Gibaly