Remember laying a sheet of paper over a coin and scribbling across it until the face appeared? Lebanese artist Dala Nasser plays a version of that game with ruined buildings, using fabric for the paper and clay powder for the pencil. When Frieze Abu Dhabi opens for the first time, from 19 to 22 November at Manarat Al Saadiyat, she will be the artist the fair places at its centre, as the first recipient of the Frieze Abu Dhabi Artist Award. Nasser will be creating a newly commissioned piece for the Atrium of the fair, but an insightful way into her work is through the 2023 installation Adonis River.
Dala Nasser, Adonis River, 2023.
Born in Tyre in 1990 and now based between London and Beirut, Nasser studied at Central Saint Martins and the Slade before an MFA in Painting at Yale, and she still describes herself first as a painter. Her basic materials are fabric and pigment on stretcher bars, as in any painting. What she does with them is less usual. Soil, ash, clay, charcoal, plants and insects are soaked, stained, dyed and rubbed into cloth, often by frottage on the land or sacred site itself, so each piece becomes a porous archive of a place...
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Image Credits:
All images are credited as follows: Installation view, Dala Nasser, Adonis River, 2023, Renaissance Society, Chicago. Courtesy of the artist, Renaissance Society and Commonwealth and Council. Photo by Bob.