This ongoing series of sculptural photographs, paintings and furniture reference the reliefs found in Assyrian monuments, particularly those depicting flora. The images portray present-day versions of those species, many of which no longer exist within Syria’s borders due to geopolitical changes, plant migration, or extinction. Highlighting these shifts invites reflection on our relationship to land and borders, and how plant migration mirrors human migration — both shaped by the need to adapt, evolve, and form diasporic communities.
This botanical mapping of the Levant also considers the role of scent in evoking a romanticized attachment to place, and how such nostalgia can limit broader senses of connectedness. As a Syrian, I feel a strong affiliation to Syrian land and therefore other myself, even towards border nations like present day Lebanon which was, until recent history, part of present-day Syria. Does differentiated culture and our affinity to ancestral land separate ourselves?
Landscapes shift, borders change, and both ecology and geology transform. But does our relationship to land evolve with these mediated histories?
