The National

The exhibition, A Permanent Nostalgia for Departure: A Rehearsal on Legacy with Zaha Hadid, opened on October 22, with commissions by Hadid, as well as Rand Abdul Jabbar, Khyam Allami, Emii Alrai, Hera Buyuktasciyan, Andrea Canepa, Dima Srouji and Civil Architecture Studio's Hamed Bukhamseen and Ali Ismail Karimi.

The show celebrates Hadid’s work as part of the 20th anniversary of the art centre’s building. It is called the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art and was Hadid’s first museum commission.

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For Like an Avalanche Started by a Gentle Push (2023), Buyuktasciyan began with a photograph of Hadid as a child standing in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. She connected the fountain's cascade of water to the central feature of the CAC itself – its curving concrete ramp that Hadid called the building’s “urban carpet”. Hadid brought this typically horizontal element into the building, sweeping it upwards to stretch through the museum’s five floors.

In response, Buyuktasciyan created a two-storey carpet, woven out of beige, black, and tan, rendering Hadid’s concrete feature in the softer handiwork of textiles that she is known for. But as she was planning the work, she realised the carpet was too tall for her studio in Istanbul, and she borrowed a friend’s place on the outskirts of the city.

It happened to be in the Armenian neighbourhood of Tatavia where Buyuktasciyan herself had grown up. The work began incorporating homages to that diasporic enclave. She wove patterns inspired by Tatavia's architecture and topography into the carpet and in a separate series of collages, mixed textile cut outs with images of the neighbourhood.