Members of artist Shezad Dawood’s team have begun installation of the Leviathan exhibit which will be viewable at Salisbury Cathedral for the next two months.
Reflecting on a year in which immigration and the climate have been high on the political and news agenda, a solo exhibition by artist Shezad Dawood, curated by Beth Hughes, Salisbury Cathedral’s Visual Arts Curator, is being installed in the Cathedral this November.
Central to the exhibition are a series of powerfully affecting textile paintings from the Labanof Cycle, 2017, which feature objects recovered from the seabed by a team from the Laboratory of Anthropological Forensics (LABANOF) at the University of Milan.
These forensic anthropologists go out with UN rescue teams to retrieve and catalogue personal possessions found after a refugee ship has foundered. Ranging from a pinch of earth wrapped in a twist of cling film to a passport and a faded photograph, the artworks are tribute to lives lost and those that were saved.
The paintings also offer Cathedral visitors a chance to reflect not just on the modern crisis, but also the story from Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus and his family flee Egypt to escape King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.
The exhibition of 17 artworks is the first time Shezad’s work has been featured in a cathedral.
Shezad Dawood said: “This is such an exciting opportunity to bring some of the key questions I’ve been asking of climate, migration and our shared humanity into as rich and relevant a setting as Salisbury Cathedral.
"And to situate my work in dialogue with one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, and its legacy in terms of renegotiating the social charter, at a time when a renewed sense of sharing and purpose is urgently needed.”
Kenneth Padley, canon treasurer at the cathedral, said Shezad’s exhibition, which features artwork with a message of global unity and representations of items lost by refugees who have lost their lives during treacherous journeys across the channel, is an important theme for the church during Christmastime, especially after a year in which immigration has played a particularly thorny talking point in politics.
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Kenneth said: “It’s about the messiness and brokenness of the world, and that’s the world into which Jesus is born on Christmas.
“The story of the incarnation, which is the heart of the Christmas story, is that Jesus comes to redeem us from the flaws and limitations of this world and more specifically within that, a lot of stuff, especially in [the hanging paintings], for example, which are hanging down the Nave, around migration and the tragic stories of those who have failed to come across the Mediterranean.
“Jesus himself was a migrant, was a refugee in the Christmas story as we read it in Matthew, Chapter Two, Jesus flees from the evil King Herod, leaving Bethlehem, to go into Egypt and then return to Nazareth. It’s very contemporary but it really reflects with the story of this time of year.”
Installation of the exhibition is ongoing, with the official opening date set for Tuesday, November 28, though some pieces can already be seen on display. The exhibition will remain in the cathedral until Friday, February 2.
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