Sour Cords

Suspended ceramic forms, hung like offerings to the sun. Inspired by sun-drying, an ancient method of preservation. What draws me in is the tension: water is drawn away, and yet its absence becomes presence. You feel it only when it’s gone.

Oversized ceramic chilis, okra, garlic, cloves, each form ripe with memory. Garlic and chili, fierce and healing; cloves, tiny seeds of luck and tradition. In northern Palestine, cloves are stitched into bridal necklaces, marking the passage from girlhood to womanhood, from threshold to unknown.

Each sculpture carries a morsel of grief, an ember of outrage. Some are marked with childlike drawing, suns, stick figures, blocky houses, a language of innocence trying to make sense of destruction. My recurring talismanic eyes rise again, watchful, wide, emerging from hands like sails, holding silent witness to a brutality that persists, in Palestine and beyond.

Garlic bulbs loom, etched with Mahmoud Darwish’s words:
“You will be forgotten as if you never existed.”

These ceramic bodies, bulging with pain, refuse disappearance. Their grotesque scale, their vivid glazes, their irreverent brightness, all speak back to silence, to retreat, to erasure.

Drawings and ceramics produced NIKA Project Space, for Sour Things Solo show at NIKAParis. 
September 8- October 27 2024