Dala Nasser's 'Cemetery of Martyrs' Memorializes Arab Cultural Figures at Nottingham Contemporary

At Nottingham Contemporary, Dala Nasser's exhibition 'Cemetery of Martyrs' honors 43 seminal cultural figures from the Arab world, spanning the Nahda (Arab Renaissance) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to recent times. The installation features two monumental wooden structures supporting large pieces of black, blue, green, and white fabric, creating a makeshift graveyard. For accessible graves, Nasser made rubbings of tombstones on white sheets. For lost graves—such as those of Lebanese filmmaker Maroun Baghdadi, artist Saloua Raouda Choucair, and poet Mahmoud Darwish—she used blue cyanotypes with names written in sand or green malachite and indigo dyed sheets (green symbolizing paradise). Black mourning sheets create canopies overhead. An accompanying audio recording sourced from eight cemeteries across Lebanon plays, curated by Katie Simpson and Klara Szafrańska. The sand and dirt used come from Lebanon, physically bringing the resting places into the space. The exhibition includes a booklet identifying each grave with short texts; Nasser's writing eulogizes figures with wit, including her aunt Siham Nasser. Standouts include Anbara Salam Khalidi, who removed her hijab in public in Lebanon, and political writer Sonallah Ibrahim. The show runs until May 10.