Sea of Tears
Installation View “Sea of Tears”, 40-frankincense infused glass, steel plinths, 2-channel video, Noor Riyadh Exhibition
2024
Sea of Tears is a multimedia installation that uses glass sculptures, video, and sound to investigate the folklore of Ain Adhari, a desolate natural spring in Bahrain, through the lens of mythology, ecofeminism, and oral histories. Although dried out since the 1980s, Ain Adhari remains imprinted in the collective memory of those who witnessed it at its most fertile. Having grown up hearing stories of the spring without experiencing its vitality firsthand, I draw upon imagination to reconstruct the site as an anthropomorphized female body. Among the many stories surrounding Adhari, I was particularly drawn to The Myth of the Maiden of Adhari, a cautionary tale in which a young maiden, menaced by a stranger in a palm grove, weeps until her tears transform into an eternal spring. Sea of Tears reimagines this transformation from body to water through 40 frankincense-infused glass sculptures accompanied by a two-channel video and soundscape. The suspended glass forms evoke the maiden’s tears, frozen in a moment of metamorphosis. Arranged throughout the space, they orient viewers toward a suspended, transcendental moment that foreshadows the alchemy of tears becoming an oasis. Moving through the installation, viewers encounter a landscape shaped by memory, loss, and myth, reflecting on the absence of the spring while imagining its continued existence within folklore and collective remembrance.