DANA AWARTANI (Arábia Saudita, 1987) is an artist. She graduated in arts from Central Saint Martin’s College, London (2009), and holds a master’s degree from Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, London (2011), besides having studied illuminated manuscripts in Istanbul (2012). She produces drawings, objects, videos and installations, blending traditional elements of Islamic art with procedures common to the so-called contemporary language of visual arts. She took part in the biennials of Marrakech (2016), Yinchuan (2016), Kochi-Muziris (2016) and Jakarta (2017). Her individual exhibits include I Went Away and Forgot You . . ., Galeria Franco Noero, Italy (2017), MOCAD, Detroit (2017) and The Hidden Qualities of Quantities, Athr, Jeddah (2015). She has works in the collections of the Sheikh Zayed National Museum, the British Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum, among other institutions.
The work I WENT AWAY AND FORGOT YOU. A WHILE AGO I REMEMBERED. I REMEMBERED I’D FORGOTTEN YOU. I WAS DREAMING (2017) is composed of two elements: an installation and a video. In the former, Awartani lays down a patterned floor using sand colored with natural dyes. In the latter, we see the inside a house of Hejazi architecture, a common style in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before its westernization from the 1950s onwards, where she meticulously sweeps away a similar installation until it disappears completely. Besides celebrating and preserving the geometric art of Islam, the artist creates a radical relationship between time and aesthetic contemplation, ephemerality and eternity, in a powerful convergence of Islamic mysticism and issues of contemporary Western art.
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