A Vigil: Alserkal Arts Foundation Façade Commission

The inaugural edition brings together the transcendental practice of artist duo Iqra Tanveer and Ehsan Ul Haq.

In A Vigil, artist duo Ehsan Ul Haq and Iqra Tanveer resonate with a moment in time marked by urgency, a period of instability foreboding an impending paradigm shift. The work evokes a vigil positioned between ruin and un-ruin. A constellation of fragmented narratives moving between mourning and remembrance, mirroring cyclical incantations embodying decay and regeneration.

A Vigil activates moments that surge, revealing stories over time. Each fragment is an anomaly, yet also a moment of self-witnessing, where everyone and everything becomes mirrored. Every pane opens onto a form of mirrored realism, manifesting in cyclical motions of learning/unlearning, transitioning in new stories, renewed remembrance and circular histories.

It acts as an allegory of shifting states, a moment of self-witnessing that holds histories as active agents to rethink ideas of progression and potential futures.

The different objects coalesce with the rhythms of the day asking you to join the cadence as sunlight ripples over the glass until dusk. At night, an eclipse rises and recedes, its movement is unknown and intentions uncertain. On the edge, a suspended clay fish inhabits the tension between earth and water, while a witness blurs the distinction between the mirror and the mirrored. Blood-red skies and mourning roses evoke loss, as Kaff Maryam signals the possibility of healing and renewal. Fallen stones disrupt this rhythm, drawing birds towards an unexplained occurrence. Each object heralds instability: cycles of decay and regeneration remain forever unsettled.

Commissioned by Alserkal Arts Foundation.