The National previews Kevork Mourad's solo exhibition Between Floating Worlds at Tabari in DIFC, works on cotton about migration and the space between cultures.
Razmig Bedirian opens with We take it as we go, in which ink towers with cut out windows flow down into a bundle of creased textiles carried by a figure whose feet alone are visible. The exhibition opened on Tuesday 5 November 2019. Mourad brought the cotton fragments of his work from New York in a backpack and layered and framed them in Dubai.
"Most of my work is inspired by migration, whether forced or voluntary, and the area that exists between cultures," Mourad told the paper. Born in Syria, he studied painting and book illustration in Armenia before moving to California in 1999, and now lives in New York. The article describes his process: smudging ink onto acetate, drawing into it with whatever is at hand, pressing it onto stretched cotton and cutting out the forms to layer them like a puzzle, drawing on Sumerian, Babylonian and Armenian sources.
Bedirian also recalls Mourad's performance A Home Within with the composer Kinan Azmeh at Madinat Theatre earlier that year, and his film Four Acts for Syria. Mourad says he hopes the works give a dreamlike impression, and that despite their weight they carry optimism. Between Floating Worlds was Mourad's solo exhibition with Tabari in 2019.