Nadia Refaei
 ناديا الرفاعي


  1. Sabaar and Other Counter Archives
  2. A Whisper Echoes Loudest
  3. olive branch (curator)
  4. Thomas’ Garden (co-curator)
  5. Dawit Dersolign (co-curator)
  6. a garden for the things you love
  7. New Energy
  8. Roots
  9. Leading Letters
  10. Rehearsing the Future
  11. Making Ground (curator)
  12. Make Kabsah With Me
  13. 1998-2011 / ١٩٩٨-٢٠١١
  14. Both sides of either wall (co-curator)
  15. In Visible Woman
  16. Plastic Women

About
CV



Making rose jam (still), 2022, single channel video 



a garden for the things you love


Penny Contemporary
19 August – 12 September 2022

On both sides of my family, we can trace our roots back to small, remote, and predominantly agricultural communities along the Mediterranean. The practice of keeping and cultivating a garden has remained important, and entwined with familial identity, continuing across migration to new places and adapting knowledge to urban and suburban settings.

A garden for the things you love documents some of these gardens, drawing from family archive and current day to create a dialogue between different times and places.

I’m interested in the garden as a site of overlapping meanings where beauty, identity and utility intersect. This work is a beginning point in my exploration of gardening as a cultural and family practice, as I take a more active role in learning and practicing in my own garden.

Learning how to use plants found in my garden is part of this practice. In Making rose jam I use an unidentified variety of rose growing in my front yard to make the traditional preserve. The rose is a historically important plant in West Asia, particularly in my patrilineal homeland of Syria. Learning to use the flower, as well as other plants, in our traditional ways, is a process of reconsidering and reshaping my relationship to these plants. This unidentified rose, most likely introduced from another area of the world, acts a stand in for its relative. At the same time, it’s also a reminder of distance and the gap between places.


Making rose jam (still), 2022, single channel video 


το ωρεα μας κηπο (our beautiful garden), 2022, digital print
untitled (installation view), 2022, digital print
(L-R) letter from Damman to Nipaluna and Yiaya and Pappou (installation view), 2022, digital prints
(L-R) Papou, Preparing the greenhouse for spring and untitled (installation view), 2022, digital prints


A garden for the things you love, 2022, digital print