Nour Jaouda

Born 1997 in Cairo, Egypt, lives and works between her place of birth and London, UK

Nour Jaouda is a Libyan artist who relishes in the slow process of fabricating hand-dyed textiles and embraces the unpredictability of organic dyes. Her artistic process involves collecting natural pigments, cloths, and found materials for her tapestries and fiber installations. Whether evoking the uprooting or replanting of the self, her works embody the fluidity of identity, exploring tensions such as fragmentation and reconstruction, rootlessness and regeneration. She holds a BFA from the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University (2018), and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2021). Recent exhibitions include MOCO Montpellier Contemporain (2024) and the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2024).

Before the Last Sky

Oriented towards Makkah al-Mukarramah, this installation evokes the act of prayer and is formed of three textiles draped to represent integral postures in Islamic prayer—ruqu`, sujud, and julus—bowing, kneeling, and prostration. The textile triptych examines how portable prayer mats create a temporary religious space, transforming a floor from mundane to sacred, and acting as a threshold between the material and the spiritual. Alongside them are suspended metal gates reaching heavenwards, which are inspired by the crenellations that surmount the walls of mosques, reflecting on the porous borders that connect the earth and the heavens. By using simple materials in a majestic scale, the work embodies an act of submission and surrender.

The fragile character of the hand-dyed textiles, with their voids and irregular outlines, encourages reflection on the impermanence and imperfections of human existence. The textiles create a meditative pause for introspection, focusing on the prayer mat as a sacred space and the performative ritual of prayer as sacred time. As a transportable threshold placed between the ground and the person praying, the prayer mat constructs a temporary yet timeless spiritual moment.