Where, if not faraway, is my place?

Libyan-born artist Nour Jaouda’s textiles are a conduit for exploring sights relating to migration. Each of her large-scale dyed tapestries mirror the shape of prayer mats from her immediate surroundings in Cairo, Egypt. The metal structures beneath them are inspired by buildings in and around the streets beyond her studio. Working between there and London, her works jostle these two contrasting environments, intuiting a greater understanding about her own cultural identity.

Nour’s attentiveness to the origin of materials means each meticulously layered piece becomes part of a wider discussion around belonging – the patinaing on metal, or blotches of dye on fabric a constant reminder of their immediate past. She notes that "meaning is destabilised and new connections emerge" through the act of making.

Quite often Nour’s work subsume the viewer, as a freestanding steel structure alluding to a gate reveals avenues or as she calls them "liminal spaces". When moving amongst the installations, hanging textiles and fabric pieces drape from the metal, slowly revealing themselves through deft details. On the walls parallel are more fragments of Nour’s expansive practice, where her prayer mat series line the walls in similar looming sizes. On choosing to work with prayer mats, Nour notes that "the very purpose of their mobility and migratory nature, is to create grounded stillness". Through her deconstructive process of making and pulling apart materials, her intuitive decision making capture much of the mats’ symbolism, which would’ve traditionally faced towards the direction of Mecca. In hers, they sit proudly against the wall, towering above eye-level.

The materials they’re compiled in range in varying tableau, combining precisely scorn pieces with more rougher, frayed fabrics. For Nour, art making is a process of combining her ever-amassing materials into totemic structures that envelop our senses, akin to the high-rise buildings she walks past everyday.