For her first exhibition at Commonwealth and Council, Innocents at Home, Dala Nasser combines paintings—rubbings made with ash on muslin and cotton fabrics—with hand-built wooden armatures that coalesce into multi-part sculptural assemblages. While each rubbing is a poetic, affective transcription or reconstruction of a sacred relic or architectural site in Western Asia, it also functions as a record of an action repeated again and again—traces of the body in motion, of the physicality and labor required to excavate and (re)produce cultural memory. Nasser’s installations conjure distant times and places with complex histories mired in geopolitical unrest, but also myths and stories that have morphed and shifted over vast swathes of time.

The exhibition’s title, Innocents at Home, is a locus for this body of work that implores the viewer to call into question the terms “home” and “abroad,” the familiar and foreign. A direct reference to the 1869 book by Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Nasser draws parallels with Twain’s observations made during his visit to Western Asia with colonialist stereotypes which still persist today. What constitutes home and ideas of borders and belonging?

There is a theatrical quality to Nasser’s elaborate constructions consisting of fabrics dyed with natural pigments and wooden structures reminiscent of makeshift stages awaiting activation. Further dramatized with draped fabrics, her installations are not meant to replicate a particular place; rather they offer spaces of remembrance articulated through rubbings that inscribe the surfaces of the rocks, ruins, riverbeds, and tombs that are her subjects. The works in the exhibition are assembled into discrete structures with layers of fabrics draped over wooden supports, recalling banners or shrouds. The fabrics overlap visually, blending the materials and rubbings into constellations. The color of each fabric connotes particular cultural and spiritual meaning—those dyed green are in dialogue with Noah’s grave sites and symbolize paradise, purity, and prosperity. As is a constant throughout Nasser’s practice, the fabrics are dyed with natural elements—shells and seeds, ash, and crushed malachite.

Working primarily outdoors, Nasser begins each project with extensive research then travels to specific sites within Western Asia where the rubbings are realized. A recent installation, Noah’s Tombs, for the Aichi Triennial 2025 forged a connection between Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey where the burial tombs of Noah—an important patriarchal figure in multiple global religions, including Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—are thought to reside. Each of these sites is located near significant bodies of water—lakes, rivers, the sea—which correlate to the story of Noah’s Ark, whereby Noah and the animals he saved were washed ashore to safety while the oceans rose around them. Like Noah’s remains, the Ark has never been located. Nasser produced three structures for each of these burial sites, proposing an instance of unity despite purported contestations.

The works in Innocents at Home are imbued with meaning that is both layered and entangled. Nasser invites the viewer to consider the forms—natural and human-made—that constitute these spaces and serve as evidence of histories and myths that are simultaneously specific yet indivisible.

Dala Nasser (b. 1990, Tyre; lives and works in Beirut and London) received an MFA from Yale University (2021) and a BFA from University College London (2016). Selected solo exhibitions include: Nottingham Contemporary (forthcoming); Kunsthalle Basel (2025); Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2022); and V.O Curations, London (2022). Selected group exhibitions include: Aichi Triennale, Nagoya (2025); Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2025); Accelerator, Stockholm (2025); Wellcome Collection, London (2025); Espoo Museum of Modern Art (2025); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024); Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riiyadh (2024); 15th Sharjah Biennial (2023); 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); and Beirut Art Center (2019). Nasser is a recipient of Isola Sicilia Prize (2022) and 32nd Salon D’Automne Emerging Artist Prize (2017). Nasser has participated in residencies at V.O Curations, London (2021); Gapado AIR, Jeju Island (2019); and Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2017).

Nasser’s work is in the collections of Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam; Qatar Museums; and Tate, London.