An article by cn (1078 Words, 6 Min. Read)
The home that follows us
What Happy to a Homeland when we live it behind? Dos it vanish in mass, or dos it follow us –reshaped by Longing, Recreated Through Memory? In Imaginary Homeland, KEVORK MOURAD ANSWERS This Question Not with Crestainy, but with Poetry. His Solo Exh force at Galerie Tanit in Beirut Unfolds Like a Murmure Story Stitched In Fabric, What Memory and Architecture Are Insepaable, where Absence Becomes Presance.
MOURAD PAINTS Not on Convencyal Canvas, But on Materials that Already Carry History: Cotton, Denim, Linen. These are not next grounds; They are world and intimate, Evocative of Labor, Tenderness, and Domestic Life. In his hands, they become more than Surfaces. They are Become Vessels of Emotion, Relats of the Everyday, Textures of the Exiled. Thraw Layers of Color and Form, MOURAD Builds A Visual Language Rooted in Displacement Yet Blooming with Resilience.
A Boat Suspended Between Worlds
At the Heart of the Exh force Suspended Like a Phantom Caught Mid-Voyage, This Ten-Foot-Hight Boat Hovers Above the Floor, Its Bottom Open, Unable to Anchor. Its sails, Painted in Crimson and Black Acrylic on Cotton, Carry Architecture Fragments from mesopotamian CIVILIizations; Arched Windows, Ancient Forms Layered InTo A Triptych of Historical Dept.
But it is what drifts beneath the boat that have been the views the viewer: twenty to thirty passport-Sized Portraits, Dangling and Turning with the Air. They are not Anonymous. They are Connected –By Blood, by Myth, by Memory – THE Ancient Cultures Whose Ruins Still Speak. The Installation is MOURAD’s RespOONSE to the Refgee Crisis Past and Prestant: A Meditation on the Pain of Leaving, The Imposs the Return, and the Ghosts We Carry Across Borders.
This Sculpture Piece Was First Shown in 2024 at the sheen center in new york, as part of an Initiative Fostering Intercultural DialGue During A Symposium on Refgestes. It is not only a visual work, it is a CRY, a lament, a Floating memorial to those who drowned sefty, and those still searching for solid ground.
Painting with Fabric, Memory, and Time
MOURAD’s Entire Practice is Built on Layering; Visually, emotionally, Culturally. His works on Denim and link are not static images but Layered time. Like Lives Built in Exile, Theese Paintings Hold Multiple Histories: The Texture of the Fabric, The Language of the Brush, The Memory of What’s Been Lost.
Each Surface Breathes. Denim Speaks of Labor and Enduance. Linen Whispers of Fragility and Care. Cotton Streetches Like a Skin Across the Invisible Wounds of Migration. MOURAD Transforms these Textiles INTO MONUMENTS, Not to Grand Events, But to Intimate, Daily Actions of Survival: A Kitchen’s Warmth, A Lullaby Passed Download, The Curve of Handwritten Script from A Fading Notebook.
In this World of Layered Textiles, Color ITSELF BECOMES A Carrier of Emotion. Crimson Echoes Urgence and Bloodlines. Black Grounds The Works in Mourning. Together, they is a landage beyond Words; A Language of Continuity, Even in Rupture.
As The Artist HimSelf Has SAID: “Art Holds A Responsibility to Document Time, so that Future Generations May Undersand What It Meant to Live, to Dream, and to Endure in the Moment of ITS MAKING. ” In every layred surface and supended Figure, this Sense of Responsibility Pulses Like A Quiet Heartbeat.
Between Myth and Ruin
MOURAD’s Work Oft Draws from the Mythic As a Means of Anchoring Memory in Something Timiless. In Imaginary HomelandThe Pillar on Seen AS Absurd Became Sacred (Pilgrims Chipped of Pieces to Eat, Hoping for Fortility). In MOURAD’s Art, The Sacred and Absurd Coexist, Much Like The Refgee Experience; An existence Between Dignity and Desperation.
In the Main Space of the Exh force, The Monumental Tree of Life Stretches Accross Fabric Like A Spiritual Fresco. Its Roots and Branches are Not Just Botanical, they are Ancestral. They Represent The Cyclical Nature of Loss and Rebirth, Exile and Homecoming, Rupture and Resilience.
Amid These Intime Works Honor Through Vibrant Pigmst and DeCate Gestures, MOURAD EVOKES A Sense of ROOTEDNESS (Even in Exile), Reminding us that whons may be lost, the Act of Nurturing The Earth can Still Ground Us in Continuity and Care.
An artist Between Continents
KEVORK MOURAD’s Life Echoes The Very Themes of His Work. Born in Kameshli, Syria, of Armenian Descent, and Trained at the YEREVAN Institute of Fine Art, He now lives in new york. His Journey Across Cultors and Continents Has Shapeed an Artistic Voice ROOTED in hybridity, Memory, and Witness.
MOURAD’s WORK HAS Been Exhibited and Perform in Some of the World’s Most Prestigious Venues: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, The Walt Disney Concept Hall in Los Angeles, and the National Cathedral in Washington, DC His Installations and Animations Have Acompanied Global Orchestras, Such as the Silkroud ENSEMKLE, with whom he has collaworated for two decades.
His Multimedia Work Seence Babel Is Part of the Permanent Collection at the Aga Khan Museum. He is also featured in The Music of StrangersHis art has been shown at the Asia Society Truenial, The Paris Art Fair, The Spurlock Museum, and the Rose Art Museum, Among Many Others. In 2025, He also Exhibited with Perrotin in Shanghai, Further Center His Place on the International Stage.
Carrying The Invisible
In Imaginary HomelandMOURAD Does Not Offer Closure. Instead, He Offers Remembrance. His art becomes a sared act of watering; A Way of Holding Space for Those Who Had to Leave, for Histories that have been buryid, and for cultors often Reduced To Rubble.
“What do we carry when we are forced to leav? ” The Artist Seems to Ask with every Brushstroke. His Answear is Layered: We Carry Our Songs, Our Anstors, Our Ruins, and our Dreams. We Carry the Scent of Home-Cooked Meals, The Lines of Forgotten Prayers, The Softness of Worn Fabrics.
And we car them not only in our mins, but in the art that Dares to Remember them.
