'Dana Awartani: Standing by the Ruins' at Towner Eastbourne, United Kingdom

4 November 2025

From 29 November 2025 — 25 January 2026, Towner Eastbourne presents 'Dana Awartani: Standing by the Ruins'. Dana Awartani is a Palestinian-Saudi artist who lives and works between New York and Jeddah. Through her multidisciplinary practice she addresses the physical loss of cultural heritage through the lens of abandoned, destroyed and vanishing places. Working across painting, installation, textiles, performance and film, she draws attention to both the human act of making and human loss, reflecting upon the ravages of conflict within the Middle East and architectural modernisation ingrained with colonial legacy.

Named after an ongoing series of floor installations and paintings, Standing by the Ruins presents three key moments: remembrance, healing and forgetting. Each work suggests a shifting relationship with the present and simultaneously with what is absent, rooted within a practice which Awartani describes as being as much about the story of how it is made as the finished work. Throughout, she honours traditional craft techniques – from darning to adobe building methods – working with skilled artisans and using locally sourced materials in work steeped in historical and visual references from Islamic and Arab art-making traditions.

Find out more via Towner Eastbourne.

Image: Dana Awartani, Standing by the Ruins III, 2025. Compressed earth. Each set: 320 x 320 cm, Each set: 126 x 126 in, © Dana Awartani. Courtesy Arnolfini. Photographer Lisa Whiting Photography.