Jaouda’s multi-layered textile works traverse the languages of painting, sculpture and installation to produce ‘landscapes of memory’. The forms, colours and motifs within her intricately textured surfaces gesture towards different encounters across time and space, drawing on the artist’s childhood in Libya and experiences of living between Cairo and London. Organic and geometric forms reveal themselves within her layered topographies, evoking images both real and imagined: spectral presences and absences within the shadows of memory.

Each work is intimately hand-crafted through a slow, meditative process. Jaouda begins by treating and dying her fabrics with earthy, saturated pigments, a process through which the physicality of her materials is altered and colours come to life. Then comes a process of décollage, or cutting out, which Jaouda describes as ‘a radical and poetic strategy that is as much destructive as it is constructive; where the act of undoing and unbuilding becomes an addition rather than negation to the work.’ Rebuilding layer upon layer, the fragments are reassembled into sculptural tapestries. For Jaouda, this process of material construction and deconstruction mirrors the rooting and uprooting of the self within her migratory existence. As she elaborates: ‘cultural identity is formed through a constant process of becoming.’

Jaouda’s large-scale installation at The Douglas Hyde takes inspiration from the ‘Khayamiya’, an intricately patterned textile that is created through the ancient craft of appliqué and applied to the interior of tents. Functioning as both ornament and shelter, the ‘Khayamiya’ tent often serves as a temporary ‘third space’, erected within Cairo’s dense urban areas for moments of gathering, such as funerals, Ramadan rituals and Eid celebrations. For Jaouda, the intimate tent- like environment she creates within The Douglas Hyde’s monumental gallery is also a memorial space, where viewers are invited to come together, sit and reflect. Drawing on memories of botanical landscapes, sewn onto the tent are deconstructed shapes of indigenous plants and trees that have once been uprooted. Within this sheltered retreat, Jaouda constructs a space to mourn an absent landscape.

Nour Jaouda lives and works in Cairo and London. Jaouda has a master’s degree in painting from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent solo exhibitions include: Spike Island, Bristol, UK, Art Basel Statements (with Union Pacific), Basel, Switzerland (2024), Where, if not faraway, is my place?, Union Pacific, London (2023).

Selected group exhibitions include: Poetry of the people – stemmen uit Azië en Noord Afrika, Wereldmuseum, Netherlands (2025), An Uncommon Thread, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK (2025), And all that is in between, Islamic Arts Biennale, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2025), Being Mediterranean, M.O.C.O. Panacée, Montpellier, France (2024), and Foreigners Everywhere, 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Venice, Italy (2024).

Jaouda’s works are in the collections of: Arts Council England, Tate, the Hepworth Wakefield and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

Matters of time was commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol, where it was presented September 2025 – January 2026, and curated by Nicole Yip.

Image Credit: Nour Jaouda, Matters of time. Installation view, The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin. Image courtesy the artist and The Douglas Hyde. Photography by Louis Haugh.