Ruins, Derelicts & Erasure

Exhibition dates: February 5, 2025 – May 11, 2025

Artist panel discussion: February 5, 2025, 5:30 p.m.
Exhibition opening: February 5, 2025, 6:30 p.m.

The built environment is a tangible manifestation of a nation’s intangible heritage, embodying its unique histories, cultures, and bespoke landscapes. Structures and spaces reflect layers of collective memory and identity, connecting past generations to the present and the future. It is through the design, materiality, and spatial organization of these environments that the lived experiences, traditions, and stories of a community find expression. The built environment not only preserves cultural narratives but anchors them within specific landscapes, creating a symbiotic relationship between the physical and the ephemeral. As such, it is a vital testament to a nation’s resilience, resourcefulness, and evolving legacy.

“Ruins, Derelicts & Erasure” brings together five artists, designers, and researchers—Tibian Bahari, Sari Elfaitouri, Dima Srouji, Nour Shantout, and Beirut Urban Lab— with lived experience of erasure in their respective contexts of Sudan, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Pushed to define their nation’s new identities despite the perpetual upheaval and destruction of the past decades. This exhibition presents a collection of strategies of recovery and resilience from social and spatial destruction through cultural practices and community engagement.

---

Beirut Urban Lab

Artist Biography

Beirut Urban Lab (BUL) is an interdisciplinary space at the School of Architecture and Design, part of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut. The Lab produces research on urbanization to document and understand transformation processes in Beirut, Lebanon, the region, and cities more broadly. Strongly committed to visual scholarship, they have created geographic databases, interactive platforms, and multiple mappings of urban systems and phenomena over several years. Much of this work focuses on visualizing acts of rupture, compounding crises, and the regional conflict, with the ultimate aim of exploring different strategies and imagining alternative models of recovery.

Selected Work

• Count(er)ing – Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon

Work Description

Date: October 2023 – October 2024

Locations: Palestine and Lebanon

Length: 11 mins

Following the 7th of October 2023, Palestine, Lebanon, and the region have occupied center stage in global media attention. Already rife with uncertainty and severely affected by an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing for more than 75 years in Historic Palestine, these localities are again bearing the weight of violence by the State of Israel and the international support that emboldens it. Over the past year, the Beirut Urban Lab has been tracking this violence to counter dominant media narratives by coding and visualizing data on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon’s southern border —which expanded to the whole country beginning September 2024. The most recent massive wave of air strikes across Lebanon follows months of killings, arrests, home demolitions, and settlement expansion in the West Bank, and an ongoing and relentless genocidal campaign in Gaza.

The exhibition brings together three animated data visualizations that track the urbicide in Gaza, monitor settler-colonial violence in the West Bank, and record the escalation of military operations in Lebanon. The moving snapshots, supported by static methodological descriptions and macro readings, are synchronized over an almost year-long timeline as they catalogue the hostilities at different temporal rhythms. The work on the Gaza project started by constructing an up-to-date georeferenced base-map representing the fabric that predates October 7, something which was not publicly available. Additional data was gathered from various sources to identify institutions, infrastructural utilities, green and open spaces, as well as heritage and archaeological sites. This enabled the monitoring of damage down to the building level – a unique contribution in relation to other representations of damage in Gaza – and a precise stratification of damage readings across the base-map layers. The data collected provides clear evidence of urbicide: the deliberate destruction of buildings and infrastructure in ways that also disrupt social, economic, and cultural networks, displace populations, and erase the collective memory associated with place.

The West Bank research premises that multiple forms of violence are integral to maintaining a regime of occupation. To inquire into the nature of these forms and the parties that enact them, publicly available data was re-coded based on the principle that so-called “objective” modes of processing events can inappropriately homogenize incidents of violence. Instead, the settlement project dictated a reclassification of modalities of violence that are specific to the West Bank context, grouped under the general categories of “settler-colonial” and “resistance” actions. To highlight that such incidents were occurring on a daily basis before October 2023, the count begins by adding on already accumulated data since December 2022.

The Lebanon mapping began as an escalation monitor of military activity along the country’s southern border through two indicators: the number of strikes and their average distance from the border. The frequency and distribution of strikes reveal a clear asymmetry, with northward aggression far outweighing southward strikes. The dataset also indicates an upward trend of attacks by Israel and a dramatic increase in recent months that spread to the entire country.

---

Dima Srouji

Artist Biography

Dima Srouji is an architect interested in the ground as a deep space of rich cultural weight and a space for potential collective repair. Srouji holds an M.Arch from the Yale School of Architecture and was recently the Jameel Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2022-2023. She is currently leading the Underground Palestine studio in MA City Design at the Royal College of Art in London.

Her work is part of the permanent collections at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Victoria & Albert Museum, Institut du Monde Arabe, Corning Museum of Glass, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Art Jameel, and the Sharjah Art Foundation. She has exhibited works at the 60th Venice Art Biennale, Sharjah Art Biennial 15, Lagos Biennial 2024, Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019, the first Islamic Art Biennale 2023, the first Doha Design Biennale,  at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Ford Foundation Gallery, Tai Kwun Museum, Institut du Monde Arabe, Alserkal Arts Foundation, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati and others. Her writing has appeared in multiple platforms, including The Architectural Review, The Avery Review, Migrant Journal, and The Architecture Review of New York.

Selected Work

• Encased in Remnants II

Work Description

Plasterboard, commonly used in the construction of shelters, takes on a new symbolic meaning in this work. As a material essential to creating temporary homes and safe spaces, it becomes a canvas for the stories of displacement and survival. Printed with archival images of Gaza, alongside architectural remnants and indigenous flora and fauna embedded within outlines of ancient artifacts, the plasterboard transforms from a construction element into a surface for memorialization. This shift evokes Gaza’s enduring resilience and the scars left by its destruction, serving as a reminder of the shelters built amidst violence and the lives shattered beneath the rubble. The vessels displayed collectively on the wall contain within them the remnants of Gaza creating the sense of ghostly whole where the fragments of the land as body are contained.

---

Nour Shantout

Artist Biography

Nour Shantout is an artist, researcher and educator. She was born in Damascus, Syria in 1991, she is based in Vienna since 2015. She received the Helen EL Khal prize (2014), and her diploma of fine arts at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien in 2020. She was a visiting lecturer at IZK, Architecture Faculty of the Graz University of Technology (2022-2024), and at the Institute for Transcultural Studies, Angewandte (2023-2024). Her articles have appeared in JEEM, Aljumhuriya and elsewhere. 

Nour uses Palestinian embroidery to create contemporary embroidered works that reflect social and political challenges of the region. Her work is situated in continuity with the political application of Palestinian embroidery, a practice that emerged out of the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Furthermore, her practice centres around themes of subjugated heritage, counter-memory and history, labor and alienation, from a post-colonial feminist perspective.

Selected Work

• Searching for the New Dress
• Love Poems

Work Description

Nour Shantout will exhibit selected pieces from her research-based project ‘Searching for the New Dress’, and a piece from her ongoing work ‘Love Poems’.

Searching for the New Dress is a research-based project that looks at Palestinian embroidery in Shatila, a Palestinian camp in Lebanon. It explores how embroidery is influenced by the migration of Syrian Palestinian and Syrian women who took refuge there after the 2011 revolution and the subsequent war in Syria. To create ‘New Dresses’ that reflect the socio-political, economic and demographic changes in the embroiderers’ lives in the aftermath of the Syrian revolution, Nour Shantout learned to design new motifs and types of stitches which are usually associated with Syrian and Palestinian embroidery. The research also involves interviews with embroiderers in various embroidery centers in Shatila, identifying designs that reflect the changes in Palestinian embroidery. The project asks, what if a ‘New Dress’ emerges after the Syrian revolution, the destruction of the Yarmouk camp – the capital of the Palestinian diaspora –, and the displacement of thousands of Syrians? What would it look like? Which fabric, colors, threads and techniques would be used? Which political slogans and maps would it have? 

‘Ask the Cypress Trees’, from the series ‘Love Poems’, engages with the text ‘Rethinking the Apocalypse: an Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto’ connecting the Palestinian struggle with the global indigenous struggles for liberation. 

---

Sarri Elfaitouri

Artist Biography

Sarri is an architect, artist, and curator based in Benghazi, Libya, and the founder of TAJARROD Architecture and Art Foundation. Sarri’s work is centered on an interdisciplinary synthesis between architecture, art, and the social sciences, dedicated to generating a critical attitude towards the built environment, and to investigating contemporary socio-cultural issues, identities and ideologies in the city. His works manifest as: research, theoretical architectural projects, art curation, and collage art. He has published theoretical projects and essays online, and curated/participated in several exhibitions locally and abroad. Sarri has a Bachelor’s degree in architecture, and a Master’s degree in urban design as a Fulbright scholar. 

Selected Work

• Counter-Archaeologies 

Work Description

This installation represents the potential for a decolonial critical method for reconstructing post-war Benghazi through clashing different historical urban patterns, existing and destroyed and combining them as abstract extruded artifacts. As Jacque Derrida remarked in Archive Fever, to reconstruct the archive in an interpretive method is still not a final solution. While you rebuild collective memory, you still risk the destruction of others. Hence, this work indicates both distortion and hybridization of Italian and Ottoman colonial Libya and generates a third critical mix as an “other” archeology of resistance, not for nostalgic, comfortable, functional and utilitarian reasons but for provocation and contemplation.

---

Tibian Bahari

Artist Biography

Tibian Bahari [b. 1993] is a self-taught, multi-disciplinary conceptual artist whose practice explores the intersections of identity, geography, and politics. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations, she navigates the complex relationships between land and self, engaging deeply with her Sudanese heritage. Through her work, Bahari challenges dominant narratives and examines the ways in which they shape and reflect her personal and collective identity.

Bahari’s diverse practice spans various mediums, including traditional textile printmaking, etching, environmental art, performance, and Land art. Each piece serves as both a reflection and a catalyst for dialogue, encouraging viewers to reconsider their connection to soil, movement, and space.

Bahari’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and art fairs across Sudan, the UAE, New York, Brussels, Uganda, and Kenya. She has contributed to academic journals, collaborated with fashion houses, and led workshops, demonstrating her commitment to community engagement, education, and the empowerment of youth.

Selected Work

• Self Portrait: Sakhr Al Sudan, 50kg
• Fabric of Space: Tracing The Natural
• الاتر (Al-Attar)

Work Description

This exhibition presents a series of works that investigate the spatial identity of Sudan within the context of conflict and displacement. Bahari examines the physical landscape of Sudan and the personality of the land during times of war. Her work delves into the complex geographical and social layers of Sudanese identity, informed by both informal (self) and formal (state) movements. Through this exploration, she highlights the land itself as a portal—one that shapes cultural identity and connects to broader historical narratives.

“Fabric of Space: Tracing the natural.” is a central art work in Bahari’s practice in using textiles to conceptualize movements, traces, displacement and the physical body. Revealing how certain disruptive geo-political ecosystem narrates new spatial imagery within the mapping structure. the use of geo-textiles and mixed media, is an ode to the diverse textures of Sudan. the technique in hand sewing a geo-textile piece to trace the influx of movements shaping the soil, in relation to the origin of the fabric being a permeable textile material used for soil stabilization. In particular, she reflects on Sudan’s historical relationship with cotton production, using fabric to document movement, resilience, and survival. .

A notable piece in this exhibition is “Self Portrait: Sakhr Al Sudan, 50kg”  a print of a cement bag which Bahari discovered on a deserted construction site in Khartoum, 2021. This work responds to the questions of identity and belonging, symbolizing the tension between building and destroying a nation. The cement— a material mixed with sand— relating in stark contrast to building and the fragility of both individual and national identity. The name, Sakhr Al Sudan [Sudan’s Rock] is a cement factory located in Sudan which now ironically or fittingly the artwork was lost due to the Sudanese military looting her family home. 

Another significant installation,* الأتر (Al-Attar)* , symbolizes Sudan’s poetic essence and rituals of return. The artwork is part of an on-going project that involves the collection of sand from Sudan, gathered by friends, family, and the broader Sudanese community. Al Attar الأتر is an active spiritual call for action through an artistic lens rather than a political lens for sands to be collected from each states of Sudan, as a ritual practice of hope — a practice passed on by ancestors for time and time taking sands from under the travelers feet for the purpose of coming back home. Today, for Bahari, these sands represent not only the connection to her homeland but also a deep, personal belief in the possibility and the activism of return. It is a story o􏰁 a ritual, a prayer and a hopeful belief and practice rooted in colors, nostalgia, emotions, women, feelings, and remembrance.