The National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, commissioned by the Visual Arts Commission of the Ministry of Culture, will open on 9 May with Dana Awartani’s May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones, curated by Antonia Carver, with assistant curator Hafsa Alkhudairi.
The commission is Awartani’s most ambitious to date. Building on her training in geometric art forms, the work draws on ancient mosaic traditions. Taking her practice to new levels of complexity in collaborative process and material execution, it is the result of in-depth research into places across the Arab world that have been subjected to devastating damage in recent years, and which are under threat from man-made conflict and violence.
From mosques to ancient palaces, including archaeological sites such as a necropolis and caravansary, the piece references twenty-three places of living and historical significance, each of which holds immeasurable cultural and material importance, recognized by UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund, ALIPH Foundation, and other public bodies that seek to preserve their threatened legacies.
The installation encompasses the entire floor of the pavilion, assembling mosaic references from across Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine whose shared motifs and traditions highlight common cultures spanning some three millennia. As visitors step into and traverse the imagined archaeological site, they encounter highly detailed geometric, floral, and faunal designs of extraordinary intricacy and material fragility. Eschewing binding agents, the bricks crack as they dry, conveying the potential loss of shared histories. This engagement with mosaics – a medium originating in Mesopotamia and sustained through Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and modern contexts – recontextualizes imperiled histories within a contemporary setting, speaking to a collective heritage that transcends borders.
Created over more than 30,000 artisan hours, the piece references the concept within master-craft contexts of “many hands.” A celebration of co-authorship and transmission of collective skill and knowledge, Awartani’s process is an act of preservation through this living heritage of making, which is also under threat due to both automation and the displacement of communities.
Awartani’s practice embeds this collaboration with master artisans, recognizing their indispensable role as custodians of ancestral knowledge over centuries. For the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia, the work is also a collaboration with the Saudi context: working with thirty-two artisans at a studio site in the mountains outside Riyadh, the artist sourced four differently hued clay earths from distinct geographies across the Kingdom to create over 29,000 sunbaked clay earth bricks.
May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones is a plea to audiences that borrows from classical Arabic poetry, an extension of the artist’s practice and her rich layering of cultural references, where pausing before ruins is an active, contemplative act that summons memory, loss, and the continuity of time. Playing with notions of empathy for and solidarity with people who maintain a connection with the past and care for material heritage, it also centers materiality and organic matter – including the clay, earth, and stone used in
Awartani’s work – as a constant over millennia through cycles of environmental and man-made destruction and creation.
