Dana Awartani Remakes History in the Saudi Arabia Pavilion in Venice

When you enter the Saudi Arabian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, you are first struck by the scale of the project: tens of thousands of clay bricks pieced together to replicate the form of a traditional mosaic, spread across the floor with walkways between the bricks. If you’re thinking this couldn’t possibly be the work of one man, you’d be right.

Although the pavilion was designed by Dana Awartani, a mixed-Palestinian, Saudi, Jordanian and Syrian artist from Jeddah and New York, she is the first to highlight the fact that she had numerous skilled craftsmen working with her on the project, all of whom are noted in the wall text.

Avatani is a skilled craftsman herself. Her artistic training included a typical postgraduate course at London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins, and later a less typical course: a course in Islamic geometry at the Prince’s College of Traditional Arts, followed by official certification in Islamic lighting techniques in Turkey. Craftsmanship is central to Avatani practice. As she says, “Craft is not something that stands still. I’m interested in how craft develops into something contemporary and is used in the art world.”

History is also crucial. The title of the pavilion is “May your tears never dry, you who cry for stones”, and the source of these patterns is not just mosaic. They come from more than 20 cultural heritage sites across the Arab world that have been completely or partially destroyed by human actions during conflicts.

The recent destruction of Iran’s cultural heritage has made Avatani’s project even more important, but the war has also complicated its production and transportation. Below is an interview with her.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

ARTnews: The materials you used in this project, clay bricks made with the adobe technique, are a big part of it. What are the roots of your interest in this?

Dana Avatani: I have been researching cultural disruption since 2018. In 2019 I was invited to participate in the Rabat Biennale. In Morocco they still have a very strong ceramic tradition and they make their own clay. I was introduced to a type of Sufi artisans who consider pottery a part of their devotional practice. They sit and make hundreds of tagines every day as a prayer because, as Rumi said, there are 100 ways to pray while kneeling on the ground. Traditionally they add hay as a binding agent. I didn’t want that because I wanted something that looked like tile, but was made of brick earth and would crack a bit in the sun. That was the first time I used this material and I fell in love with it. I guess, this is something that was done in Saudi but no one does it anymore. So I found administrators who were doing this and trained them as craftsmen in my own way.

You start creating with craftsmen in this way.

Together with them I created a large-scale work for the 1st Diriyah Biennale in Riyadh in 2021 [a replica of the courtyard of the Grand Mosque of Aleppo]. I think it was for my grandmother from Damascus. She has some dementia now and I question the idea of ​​memory. She left Syria long ago; she remembers nothing. When I talk to people from Aleppo, they say, we remember the day the minaret was destroyed [during fighting in the Syrian Civil War in April 2013]. It’s so jarring because it displaces you.

It is important for you to work with craftsmen.

Central to my practice is working with artisans in my region, particularly those who are economically disadvantaged or have been forcibly displaced. All the artisans we work with on this project are economic migrants who came to Saudi Arabia. My father was an economic immigrant to Saudi Arabia. An important part of preserving traditional craftsmanship is supporting artisans. Because many of these craft traditions are not taught in schools, universities and courses. Proper learning methods are often intergenerational and are taught from one generation to the next.

You’ve also worked with textiles. Why did you choose to take this earthly approach to Venice?

It makes sense to me to do a floorboard here since you can’t really hang anything on it [brick] walls, and we are here to speak to a global audience. The scale of conflict has escalated over the past few years, so I wonder, what do we make of large-scale cultural destruction? What if instead of pinpointing one specific site, we looked at multiple sites? Then I started looking at mosaics, specifically the connection to Italy. Mosaics are prevalent here. The first mosaics came from Mesopotamia and then flourished under the Roman Empire. Then came the return of the Byzantine Empire to the Arab world. So when you look at Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, the Pacific, you see a lot of Byzantine architectural influence.

Of course, the Venice pavilion is much larger than Diriyah’s work.

Once we actually started making it, we thought: What have we done? This is crazy! That’s three times the number of bricks I was using – about 29,300 bricks.

How did you choose these specific sites?

In previous projects I had seen ruined ruins, but mosaic art specifically led to these ruins. These sites were destroyed as early as the Arab Spring, with the rise of the Islamic State, which destroyed things they deemed inconsistent with their ideology, all the way to what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon.

There are Islamic ruins here, as well as synagogues and churches.

It’s not just about pointing the finger at one group. This is actually man-made violence from all different religions and ideologies that is causing destruction and cultural cleansing. So we have mosques, churches, synagogues and secular buildings. We don’t discriminate. Regardless of who committed them, these are war crimes.

I want to talk about the process and making of this project.

For me, the production is sometimes more important than the end result. It’s very slow and meticulous.

You start with documentation. Is it difficult to find documentation for some of these sites?

We have an internal document for each site describing when and how it was destroyed. For many, these are facts confirmed by international bodies such as UNESCO. But due to the blockade in Gaza, the only confirmation we have of some sites is from social media images and other images being posted, as well as images sent in by locals. For example, Amer Shomali, director of the Palestinian Museum, said: “Oh, I know a guy who has a picture of this.”

A mosaic was discovered in 2022 in a field in Gaza. Someone hoeed the ground and found this underneath. It was immediately labeled UNESCO and now it has been destroyed. It only had a lifespan of two years in public before being bulldozed, which is scary to think about. I don’t know why, but the idea affected me more than the bomb.

Then comes the drawing and design process.

It’s very, very long because all the patterns come from these traditional mosaics. Then there are the wooden molds. We found a workshop with a craftsman from a village in India who was famous for his woodworking. I hand-make all the molds with him.

Then comes clay crafting.

We set up a makeshift clay workshop in the middle of the desert. We were given space, materials and everything for them to work on. We have about 15 to 20 craftsmen making clay on site. This was after three months of working in Riyadh instead of my hometown of Jeddah.

Why does it have to be done in Riyadh?

weather. For clay soil, a hot, arid climate is required. There’s so much humidity in Jeddah and you don’t get that much clay from Jeddah because we [Saudis] Historically it was built with stone, but in Riyadh we are building with earth. We were lucky because the weather was in our favor. It was winter, so the weather was much drier and colder. We are always at the mercy of the weather. If it rains, we have to cover the entire site with a tarp.

What are the difficulties in reconstructing a mosaic from clay?

In some cases, the original mosaic has a gradient effect. You cannot do that in this material. Therefore, these are not direct replicas as they have to be redesigned to work in this material. Animal images are difficult for me because I am trained in geometry and I know how to draw with compasses and rulers, but animals cannot be drawn with compasses and rulers.

The situation in Iran appears to complicate shipping. Antonia Carver, the project’s curator, told me that initially the materials would be transported by ship in order to be environmentally responsible, but given what’s happening in the Bay Area, that wasn’t possible. Then the plane’s route becomes very complicated.

I’m checking where the missile is going. I thought about how ironic it would be if this project was ruined.

How long did it take to install the pavilion?

We only have two weeks. We work from 8 am to 11 pm every day. We have an installation team, an unpacking station, and a team that does end-of-life work. I re-stained everything on site using natural oxide.

Once you got here, how did you organize the installation of all the components?

Every piece has a code. An archaeologist friend of ours said: “This is exactly how we investigate. It’s like an archaeological site. Everyone is working very quietly, very slowly and meticulously.”

The pavilion is laid out in such a way that there are passages leading between mosaics made of the same clay material. As you walk, you will actually be a little lower than Mosaic.

Our archaeologist friend tells us this is a big debate in her world: How do we decolonize the way we interact with sites? This idea of ​​a platform looking down is very colonial. So I decided to have the viewer walk through the installation rather than looking down at it. A lot of my early work was quite formal because you were standing on the periphery and observing. I’m thinking here: How can we make the audience feel like they’re part of something that’s inspired by an archaeological site, but not really an archaeological site? I wanted it to feel like it was dug out of the ground. I want that crunchy sound when you walk—and that feeling. Your feet are covered in dust.

What do you want visitors to experience in the pavilion?

Be aware of the cultural richness of the Arab world (just like Italy) and the importance of preserving it. I’ve seen that when people come in, they lower their voices. The same is true at the production site in Riyadh, as you can see the craftsmen working attentively, with a meditative rhythm. So I hope visitors to the pavilion will stop and think. It shouldn’t be a place where you just say, “Oh, wow, that’s beautiful.”