Noah’s Tombs (2025)

Commissioned by aichi TRIENNIAL

Dala Nasser explores themes of war, memory, and geopolitical instability through painting, installation, and textile-based works. Her large-scale installations often employ dyed fabrics that record traces of land and body. The ritualistic processes and labor involved remain embedded as layers within the fabric and pigments, transforming the installation into an apparatus that evokes sedimented time and the memory of land.

Created for Aichi Triennale 2025, Noah’s Tombs is an attempt to re-contextualize the flood myth of Noah within a contemporary geopolitical and cultural framework. Three sites across Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are each believed to be his tombs, and all are located near a river or a sea.

Nasser positions these sites as symbols that connect the land with “bodies moving across water.” The massive structure recalls the three-tiered design of the Ark, embodying a story of disaster and rebirth, while its circular structure is based on Ouroboros, a serpent swallowing its own tail, the ancient symbol of continuity and eternal return. The rammed earth symbolizes the tomb in Lebanon, the dome segment represents the tomb in Jordan, and the sandbags stand for the tomb in Turkey, respectively. A large wooden machine appears to be carving the tomb out of the earth as it rotates around the central pillar. Integrated into the work are frottage rubbings taken from the tombs and dyed fabrics, some colored with Japanese indigo, that interweave the memories of these different lands. Drawing inspiration from traditional Ainu residential architecture and the spiral patterns found in their wood carvings and other works, the work creates a space emerging between myth and reality, past and future, and reconstructs the story of Noah for the present as a post-apocalyptic yet hopeful “monument for the future.”