It is the dialogue with history that guides the hand of Kevork Mourad, an artist of Armenian-Syrian origins and now a citizen of New York. Each sign is an irreversible trait of the past that solidifies in the present. His art is imbued with stories of destroyed territories, to never forget the devastation of a war that never ended. The heart of the exhibition is Memory Gates, an immersive fabric installation completed in 2020. Suspended in space, it invites viewers to enter, moving through corridors and arches that subtly sway with their presence. Here, history is not simply observed, but inhabited. The work echoes Aleppo, Mourad's childhood home, as well as ancient Babylon and the Ishtar Gate, populated by horses, roosters and other animals. The writing that winds through the composition is a fusion of Arabic and Armenian, a language that is neither one nor the other and both. The fabric itself resembles a protective device: during the Syrian civil war, large sheets of cloth were hung over streets to protect civilians from snipers.
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