The Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), affiliated with Qatar Museums (QM), announced the installation of the artwork “Shattered, 2023” by Turkish artist Feleksan Onar, who uses glass as her ideal medium.
The hand-carved and gold-painted artwork, which will be on display until May 7, 2024, includes glass birds with visible cracks that symbolize the tragedies behind the recent earthquakes that devastated Southeast Turkey and Northern Syria.
Deputy Director for Education and Community Outreach at the MIA Shaika Nasser Al Nassr said that Onar’s creative journey explores the profound impact of political turmoil, wars and natural disasters on human beings, adding that her latest work, “Shattered, 2023”, is another artistic inclusion in MIA’s Damascus Room, which in turn went through many years of reassembly and restoration and eventually became a space for art pieces.
On her part, Feleksan Onar said that birds serve as symbols of both fragility and strength and often undergo a similar process of repair and restoration following the effects of natural disasters.
The glass birds embody people’s pain as a result of displacement, but they also show their willingness to remain standing and victorious in the face of the circumstances and their surroundings, Onar explained.
Source: Qatar News Agency