Sacred Spaces from Dena Al-Adeeb on Vimeo.

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Sacred Spaces is a four room multi and mixed media installation originally exhibited at the Falaki Gallery, American University in Cairo, Egypt, 2006. The exhibit was also presented at DIWAN: A Forum for the Arts which is a biennial program of the Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, 2007. The exhibit was inspired by footage I took during Ashura in Karbala , Iraq in 2004. The exhibit became the structural and material framework for my M.A. thesis, excerpts of which have been published in Contemporary Iraqis: Voices of Cultural Resistance Anthology; Nation, Identity, Gender and Belonging: Arab and Arab American Feminist Perspectives and Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics.

I began my reconstruction of the sacred by conceptually, visually and materially constructing a journey into ‘Ashura as ritual and art. The art installation is a material translation, an interpretive conceptual and creative expression of displacement, memory, narrative, and cultural recovery through the prism of the sacred.

Sacred Spaces
Multi media installation: 2006-2007
Video length: excerpt 45 seconds
Video length: full 6 minutes
Six framed photographs, double sided: size 18 x 14
Six framed photographs, double sided: size 15 x 12
Tombs Installation: Medium: Mixed Media on Wood: Size: 39 x 14
Shrine Installation: Medium: Wood: Size: 80 x 32