Sculptured Decompositions, 2019–2023, soft cardboard, aged topographical map, fallen paint, dust, clay, nail polish, resin, plastic, soil, 70 by 50 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Since 2018, Nesrine Khodr has used an abandoned architecture and engineering office as her studio. Located in a modernist building in Beirut’s waterfront area, the non-operational office-cum-studio still contains dusty folders of urban planning drawings and topographical maps of Lebanon dating back to the 1960s. The ceramic tiles of the office have pushed out during the last couple of decades, concrete stones have been gutted out of the surrounding walls for one reason or another, remnants of glass have fallen from wind or more violent shake-ups, and packaging paper with decades-old dust has accumulated. As dust, sand, salt, and water particles continue to enter the space, they mix with existing decayed material and other elements that Khodr brings in, such as clay and fruit.
Sculptured Decompositions (2019–2023) are six sculptural arrangements made of these different organic and inorganic elements. The office’s old and dusty topographical maps serve as the ground for all the works; they speak of coherent, well-defined, organized space. Yet the arrangements Khodr creates are precarious collections of unidentifiable objects: fragments of what was once whole that start to carry different roles, values, weights and shapes while all sharing the experience of transformation with the passing of time.
Sculptured Decompositions build on Khodr’s recurrent preoccupations, which she often expresses through video and film works where the intimacy of quotidian and ordinary actions move back and forth beyond their immediate scope and where time is a primary protagonist. With the composite pieces inSculptured Decompositions, which have been incrementally coalescing, Khodr attends to a scene of slow decomposition, expanding on its temporal limit and continued mutation.
