Nasser Alzayani

Nasser Alzayani (b.1991, Manama, Bahrain) is an artist living and working in Abu Dhabi. Nasser’s practice expresses a research-driven documentation of time and place through drawing, text and image, archival material, as well as found and cast objects. Incorporating themes and methods found in the fields of archaeology, museology, botany, among others, his works explore alternative narratives to collective experience and official histories.

Nasser’s group exhibitions include And All That Is In Between, Islamic Arts Biennale, Jeddah, KSA (2025); And The Mirrors Are Many, 421, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2023);The Memory In Our Bones, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2022); Re-appearing Imaginaries, Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, KSA (2022); Post Fiction: Manama, Alriwaq Art Space, Bahrain (2022); Art Here 2021, Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2021); So Different, So Appealing, Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2021); Kissing Through A Curtain, MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA (2020); The Youth Takeover, Jameel Art Centre, Dubai, UAE (2020); Glass Triennial, Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence, USA (2019); _____scapes, Gelman Gallery, Providence, USA (2019); and Bayn, Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2017).

Nasser is a recipient of the Louvre Abu Dhabi Richard Mille Art Prize (2021), the Fundación Casa Wabi x ArtReview Residency (2017), the Villa Lena Foundation Residency (2018), and the Cultural Foundation Residency in Abu Dhabi (2021).

He has an MFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design (2019) and a BArch from American University of Sharjah (2015). He currently heads the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) in Abu Dhabi where he is also a mentor.

I am interested in exploring those recollections that exist precariously on the edges of memory, in tracing the forgotten details that exist scribbled in marginalia, and in scratching at the surface of ‘official’ histories that have been rewritten enough times to be overlooked and pass unquestioned. At its core, my practice is about story telling. Or rather, the retelling of stories. Most of my work centers around narratives related to my home, Bahrain, but that also reverberate universally addressing issues like climate change, postcoloniality, and the rapid transformations of our natural and urban landscapes. My process is driven by research and the connections found and made between archival material and the physical properties of the mediums I employ. I often incorporate methods and techniques found in other fields of study such as archaeology, museology, and botany, to name a few.

nasseralzayani.com

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This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While the GEEX team has closely reviewed and corrected the transcription, it may still contain errors. Please direct any questions or comments to [email protected].

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Transcript

NASSER ALZAYANI:

Hi everyone. My name is Nasser Alzayani. I’m an artist from Bahrain who is based in Abu Dhabi in the UAE, where I’ve been living the past 15 years. I’m very happy to be giving this talk today, and when GEEX approached me, I’ll admit I had some doubts as to why they would want me talking about contemporary glass practice. But I mean as someone who not only has an undergraduate degree in architecture that I’ve never used professionally, but also someone who has an MFA degree in glass from RISD and has not worked with glass ever since graduating, I asked them a lot of questions and started to reflect on my practice and approach, and I started to see some interesting connections that I hope you’ll all be able to relate to as well.

EMILY LEACH (VOICEOVER):

GEEX, the Glass Education Exchange, welcomes Nasser Alzayani to the GEEX Talks Lecture Series. Thanks to HIS Glassworks and Pittsburgh Glass Center for sponsoring this episode. Before we begin, here’s a quick word from one of our sponsors.

[music]

EMILY LEACH: This lecture has been sponsored by HIS Glassworks. His Glassworks manufactures and supplies quality cold working tools for glass artists. Working with HIS Glassworks means working with experienced and knowledgeable glass artists based in Asheville, North Carolina. Their team has well over three decades of coldworking experience. If you want to learn more about how to use and maintain coldworking equipment, hisglassworks.com is an incredible resource. Check out their support section for product manuals, safety data sheets, in depth responses to common questions like, “Why does my piece keep grabbing the diamond disc?” Or, “Can I recycle water in the cold shop?” Browse their extensive video library for even more guidance.

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NASSER ALZAYANI: So, at its core, my practice is really about storytelling, or maybe the retelling of stories. Most, if not all, of my work is about narratives from my home, Bahrain, but I often address issues that are more universal, such as climate change, post-coloniality, and the rapid transformation of both our natural and urban landscape. My process is driven by curiosity and research. My projects typically can begin just with a conversation or from something I’ve heard, or a bit of text I’ve found that takes me down a research pathway that really opens up into something that is unexpected, and I find this process directly influences the mediums and methodologies that I work with. I’m someone who is very interested in exploring art-adjacent fields like history, archeology, botany, to name a few. And I think you’ll see in a few of the projects to come how I work.

NASSER ALZAYANI: In addition to my art practice, the thing that really influences the way I work is the fact that I’m also the head of an emerging artist fellowship here in Abu Dhabi, where I also teach. It’s called the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship, better known as SEAF. And I think that giving you a little bit of background of my time in the program as an artist and what came after is the best way to explain where I am today in my practice.

EMILY LEACH: This season, GEEX Talks will explore “Material Life Cycles: Sand, Glass and Practice.” This episode begins with a biosketch, followed by the making of three pieces, works in progress, guidance, a question from Hailey Gifford at Hastings College, a studio tour and a conversation with an important mentor, Rachel Berwick from Rhode Island School of Design.

BIOSKETCH

NASSER ALZAYANI: So, in 2015, fresh out of architectural school, I got into this program called SEAF that, at the time, was run in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design, and they had faculty come to the UAE over the course of 10 months that the program was running to give us workshops, lectures, seminars, critiques, all with the intention of building a community of artists in this place and to nurture sustainable and long term art practices for artists in the UAE. When I came into SEAF, I primarily had a drawing-based practice, or at least one that was more two-dimensional. I quickly gained an interest in sculpture and installation, as well as an interest in landscape. And I think when I say landscape here, I really mean in terms of material transformation, in particular, the fragility of our relationship with the landscape and our environment, whether that’s in memory or in a much more tangible way, in the ways in which we are slowly destroying this planet.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And I think it’s much easier for me to think about that time and reflect on that moment in my practice, but at the time, it was completely new to me and one of my mentors in the program, Rachel Berwick — who was the head of the glass department at RISD at the time, and who we will speak to a little bit later — she really picked up on this. Through her mentorship and guidance, my practice really began to shift in significant ways. All of that became a lot more clear to me the first time I stepped into a hot shop.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So as part of the exchange in this program, we visited RISD, and I was very lucky to be part of the glass workshop. Over the course of two days, I was really captivated by the nature of this material, and particularly its immediacy, and especially when you’re involved in, like a casting process. In that workshop, which is, I think, very typical of me, I wanted to cast replicas of these rocks and paving stones. So I made a bunch of them out of glass. As we were moving into the final months of SEAF, I was really thinking about a new body of work. These cast blocks got me thinking about ghostly landscapes and places and things that may not exist anymore, except in our memories with them. These are kind of the seeds that eventually grew into one of my longest projects, and probably the one that people are most familiar with.

NASSER ALZAYANI: This project, which is called “Watering the Distant, Deserting the Near,” begins with an attempt to recover memories of an experience from my childhood where I visited the natural spring of Adhari in Bahrain. The significance of this place and this memory is, I think, due to the fact that the spring no longer existed. So natural springs were such an important part of the history of civilization in Bahrain, both ancient and modern. As you know, they provided fresh water for plants and animals and humans in a part of the world that is quite arid. In fact, the fresh water of the springs is one of the two seas that form Bahrain’s name.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So Bahrain, in Arabic, literally means two seas, with the other being the salty sea of the Gulf. So in the 20th century, due to many factors, like overconsumption, climate change, the destabilization of the water table because they were drilling for oil, most of these springs have declined or completely disappeared. Adhari was probably the most important of these springs, and one that I felt I had a connection to, but only through memory. It was hazy, unclear, and I needed to find answers for myself and no one else I could ask could corroborate whether this was a real experience or not. So what began as a personal endeavor, I think, ultimately became a project about documenting the history of the spring and its decline through collective memory, you know. In what was actually like my first ever work in glass, and there are very few, I attempted to recreate this landscape of Adhari by making casts of the dry earth, and then recasting them in glass to form this kind of ghostly landscape you can walk on and see down through and into, through to a pool that was underneath your feet.

NASSER ALZAYANI: While experiencing this work, you would be listening to an audio piece that is a collection of sounds, interviews, oral histories, news clips, and some really incredible songs that were written about or recorded at the spring, including this one song titled “The Way We Were” that was performed by Shirley Bassey at the side of the spring in 1975, before its drying, in this really unbelievably poignant performance that is all about cherishing memories of a time past.

[music rises, playing a segment of “The Way We Were” by Shirley Bassey]

NASSER ALZAYANI: But, yeah… I mean, anyway, I’m not sure if the work really… That iteration of the work really achieved what I was setting out to do. This is still a work that I would love to remake and one day at like an appropriate scale. Let’s see when I have access to a lot of glass and some workshops. But, you know, I really wanted to share the beginnings of this project, because it informed much of the following four years or so. And, shortly after that, I applied to RISD — RISD Glass — and I started my MFA in 2017. And I remember my very first class was hot casting with Jocelyn Prince, and it’s funny, but you know, actually the most important thing I got out of that class was not how to work with glass, but actually how to work with sand. As some of you may know, sand is used as a mold material for hot casting, so whether as loose sand or as, like, kind of… of more solid molds that can be made in parts. And it was learning this latter approach that was really pivotal in this new direction I was taking, not only for this project in particular, but I think in my practice as a whole.

WATERING THE DISTANT, DESERTING THE NEAR

NASSER ALZAYANI: So I looked back and found these images of my first crit, where I was showing the, like, very first iteration of this project and this work. And what really stands out to me is just how much the installation of the work has evolved and adapted throughout the years. I’m going to show a few of these iterations. What’s important to note here is that, due to the nature of this material — its fragility, its ephemerality — this is a work that actually has to be remade every time that it’s shown. So, you know, I don’t have any pieces left of this very first iteration. And over the years, I’ve come to feel that it is this remaking, this ritual of reforming, where the memory of the landscape actually survives. And with each re-showing, each retelling, the story is heard by new audiences who may not have a direct relationship with this one particular spring, but I can guarantee have some other place that they’re thinking of in the exact same way.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So the very first time I showed this work in an exhibition was… I mean, supposed to be in March 2020 at MASS MoCA. And, yeah, we all know what happened then, but the show did eventually open, and I’m really glad I was able to go back and see it, you know, that they had extended the show for a few extra months. This was an installation that I worked on with Ali Foradas, who was curating the show. And the intention here was really to create the sense that you were walking into a space where you were encountering these like pseudo-artifacts.

NASSER ALZAYANI: We had this really harsh work lamp and a tarp laid out on the floor, which served as kind of like this backdrop for the 30 sand tablets that I had created. I was very interested in the way the archaeologists work, and the methodologies that they employ, and so much of the language and the decisions that I, that I was making, come out of that interest the role of the installation really was to explore kind of these vestiges of memories unearthed through research and through the reconstruction of narratives that surround the spring. The sand fragments that you see recite sections of a song by Mohamed Yousef Al Jumairi. He’s a Bahraini singer, and the song is titled “عذاري وين الماي؟”. The translation is “Adhari, Where is the Water?” And that song can be heard in the accompanying audio piece, amidst voices of various individuals that have relationships to the spring.

NASSER ALZAYANI: The title of the work, “Watering the Distant, Deserting the Near”, comes from a poem titled Adhari that was published in 1970 and it was by a really famous Bahraini poet named Ali Abdulla Khalifa. And in this poem, he directly addresses the spring, speaking to the spring, asking it “Adhari, how long will you water those distant palms?” In this case, he’s describing both the fact that the channels that come out of the spring, that carry water, are very far reaching, but also that this was a resource that was actually being redirected from poorer farmers to the lands of the wealthy. The fragility of the sand here, I think, really evokes both the dryness of the current landscape as well as the slow fading of its memory in the heart of Bahrainis. And I was really interested in creating these works that had a fragmentation, and that the fragmentation of these lyrics could also describe, kind of the gaps in our memories, and that the gaps, you know, would gradually grow larger as the objects begin to disintegrate. 

NASSER ALZAYANI: So the second iteration of the work comes about a year or so later. It was shown at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. And once again, here, I’m interested in responding to the site and the context of the museum as a space that safeguards and displays artifacts, almost always behind glass, almost not even almost always not to be touched. But I wanted to subvert that by displaying artifacts that: one, are not behind glass and, two, that were slowly falling apart. So to do this, I created a display table that incorporated dozens of these artifact armatures that could, you know, carefully, be reshaped and molded and to kind of like hold every individual fragment. So each one has its own custom armature. Just by virtue of having them held up and raised up and not resting on a surface, they were now at the mercy of gravity. So, over the course of the show — which was up for, I think, four or five months — the display table, which was black, started to be covered in like grains of sand. It started accumulating the sand. Pieces started to break off. People were touching the work. People were leaving messages in the sand. So I… it was really fascinating to see the ways in which people interacted with, like, art or an artifact.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So, you know, after each incident, I would have the conservation team on the phone with me, calling me, texting me, saying, you know, “SOS, what do we do?” And the discussions were always really fascinating and really great. I mean, you know, they had a job that was to protect the work and preserve it, and I had an intention to let it live. To me, any artifact, especially, you know, ones that are functional pieces, when you put them behind a thick layer of glass, they’re not alive anymore. They’re not… they’re not aging, they’re and they’re not active. That was such an interesting experience. And I have tons of screenshots of, you know, the conservation team sending me messages with photographs of someone saying “hello from so-and-so” in the sand and asking how they could fix it. And you know, they would… they would come in with their brushes and find ways to, like, blow air and blow the sand away naturally. And so it was… it was, yeah, it was such a wonderful experience for me. Not… I don’t know, I don’t know about them.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And I mean, there were a couple of other showings of this work in in some galleries, but the last iteration of this that I want to talk about is, is also the most recent one, and it was part of the Islamic Arts Biennale that happened in Jeddah this year, earlier, at the beginning of this year. And this was a Biennale that was held at the old Hajj Terminal at the airport in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. And the site is this absolutely massive space, kind of divided, but it’s a massive, massive space that, you know, was originally built in the early 80s. The function of it was to receive millions of pilgrims that were going to Mecca every year. So it was really this daunting site, and you can feel really small in that space. 

NASSER ALZAYANI: And so my initial approach was to try to figure out a way to address the scale, while at the same time making the work feel like a part of this landscape. And because I had a lot of physical space to work with, I wanted to make the work feel like a monument or a memorial to the site of the spring. And so the idea here was really to lift the earth and set it on a plinth so it could tell its story. And one of the differences in this project, and in this iteration of the work, compared to some of the previous ones, is that the text is actually pressed in or kind of like carved out of the sand rather than it being raised off of the surface, like in earlier iterations.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Again, I was looking at, you know, in the context of the show, I was very much inspired by, like, these early Islamic carved stones. And I felt as though, in this work, the words really felt like they were carved out of the sand. Another interesting challenge that I was facing because of the scale was that each length is around five by three meters, four by two and a half or four by three. So I really had to work kind of like in a new systematic way. And so one of the beautiful things about Arabic, Arabic type, and the Arabic language in general, is that the letters in each word are all connected. And not only that, but each individual letter can also take on a different form depending on whether it’s at the beginning or the middle or the end of a sentence. So to do this, I had to essentially fabricate every letter in three different forms and then be able to, kind of like, piece them together to form the words of this poem from, you know, one cast, one frame, to the next. So it was very much similar to, kind of like typesetting, like old school typesetting that was… That was really fun.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And then another big difference, and this was, oddly, the first time that this was the case, was that this installation was going to be also outdoors, and it was going to be exposed to the elements. And even though it was under this giant umbrella canopy, it did rain just before the opening, and it got soaked. But thankfully, there wasn’t much damage, although, you know, I mean, even in the making of it, there’s always, there’s always some kind of, like… “damage” that happens or erosion. But it came out, I think, really beautifully. 

NASSER ALZAYANI: But to me, the most beautiful thing was… was really seeing how the work changed throughout the day, from sunrise to sunset. And throughout the day there would be this moving circle of light that was coming from the oculus in the canopy, and so it would like be moving all very slowly, all across the face of the work, and kind of like illuminate parts of the letters and parts of the words when the sun was setting. And would come kind of like low below the canopy. It would have this really beautiful raking light that really, just like revealed all of the text and almost made the work glow.

BRITISH CLUB TATTOOS

NASSER ALZAYANI: The next project I want to talk about begins with a famous photograph, one that most of the people watching will probably have never seen, but that I would wager that everyone in Bahrain probably knows very well. This photograph, taken in 1912, records the meeting between the French jeweler Jacques Cartier with a group of leading pearl merchants, both from Bahrain and from Eastern Saudi Arabia.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And the way the story is told describes Jacques Cartier as on an expedition to the Gulf, and Bahrain in particular, in search of the most perfect pearls which he clearly got. He made connections with merchants and was able to get them directly from the source. The legacy of this photograph and of that visit is one that many Bahrainis feel very proud about. It’s seen as kind of like this moment of recognition, of validation, that our pearls really must be the best if this French jeweler came all the way here to get them.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And, you know, there’s even this photograph of the King of Bahrain gifting this photograph to the French president during a state visit, which I always find, like… really fun. But it’s with the same sentiment that I’ve, you know, I’ve heard members of my own family for years describing kind of like their pride about, you know, this moment in this in this photograph, as they pointed to this figure to Cartier’s left, the figure who is second from the right.

NASSER ALZAYANI: In the photograph, they point to this person, explained to me that this man was my great, great grandfather. And the complication here is that there’s also another family that we are very closely related to who also claim this man to be their ancestor. So everyone’s very civil about it, but there’s like a civil kind of… dispute about the identity of this person. I find this whole debate really, really fascinating. And because there’s no photographic evidence or any people alive who can remember them, each family continues to claim this person. This is a photograph my aunt has in her house where there’s a caption that says, this is this so and so person Alzayani.

NASSER ALZAYANI: All of this was kind of like in the back of my mind while I was enrolled in an alchemy class, actually at RISD, and we were going through dozens of early modern alchemical texts that were full of recipes for making all kinds of things, and we had assignment to recreate one of these recipes. And I remember going through so many of them just to find something that kind of resonated with me or my practice. I went through so many recipes until I found this one recipe that was for the manufacturer of a pearl, which they claim in the last line, if managed properly, will excel the natural. And as someone who has seen a lot of pearls in his life, I was very skeptical, but curious, and so I tried it. So I gathered all the ingredients: the pulverized stone, the gum, tragacanth, cow’s milk, Tyrion wax, and the white of one egg. I think I even added, like, a single grain of sand to, kind of like, allude to this myth of the single grain of sand creating a pearl. But I thought it was a good idea to leave out the mercury, so I didn’t… I didn’t add that. But I followed the instructions. What came out was definitely not a pearl, but it was also not “un-pearl-like”.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And so, you know, I took this photograph of them, kind of like with this red background, which is a very typical way of presenting pearls in the Gulf and Bahrain in particular, as a way to, kind of like, play with this. I don’t know about the believability of these pearls, but, you know, then I began really thinking and questioning what it meant for me, an artist from Bahrain, where pearls are so prized and protected to make fake pearls. And, you know, actually pearls in Bahrain are a protected economy, and you cannot sell cultured pearls in Bahrain: the ones that are, like, kind of created in a controlled setting. That also had me thinking about believability, and how close something needs to be to the real thing to pass for real and be believed. And at the same time, I was also looking up the history of pearls in art. And, of course, you know, one of the most well known paintings in the world includes a pearl as an earring.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Particularly with this painting, through this search, I realized that the most fascinating part of this Vermeer painting is not actually how well it’s painted, but it’s the fact that, one, the pearl could not have been real. And that’s pretty much accepted because of its size and the geographic location of the artist at the time. And, two, that the girl in the painting isn’t real either. So it’s… She’s what is considered a “tronie” in Dutch, which is like a character rather than a portrait of a specific person. So I was sitting there thinking about, you know, trying to figure out something to do with my pearls. I decided that would be fun and kind of make sense to… to try to make a real pearl out of my fake pearl. I don’t know what real means in this case, but, but I thought it would be a fun and or a funny idea to try to photograph them in a way that would make them seem believable.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So this was kind of like my… This was my proposal. And… and this is what I ended up with. And so I… I think at the heart of this project is an exploration of authenticity and legitimacy. And the most important question I come out of this with is, “why do we need to measure ourselves against and seek the validation of like a Western authority?”

WARDAT AL-MUSTASHAR/THE ADVISER’S FLOWER

NASSER ALZAYANI: So this last project that I’ll speak about today is also the one I’m currently working on. Like most of my work, it’s still ongoing and pretty open ended, but it began very casually, coming up in the middle of a conversation, when a friend of mine asked, “Have you heard of the Adviser’s flower?” And I hadn’t, but I was immediately curious, because I knew that, in this case, the Adviser only meant one person. Also, because I had been looking into native plants in Bahrain and looking to research maybe the effects of climate change on species on the island. So this was… this was kind of like an interest that I had running in the background. But once they mentioned this to me, I just found it so, so intriguing. And so, to come across a flower that was associated with such a figure was weird, and I really felt like I needed to know more.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So to give a little bit of background, in 1926, a man named Charles Belgrave was hired to be the financial adviser to the Amir of Bahrain. In this photograph, Charles Belgrave is second from the left, and the Amir is in the center. And so this was a role that was supposedly not linked to any British imperial office, and would report directly to the Amir as an employee of the Government of Bahrain. But over the next 31 years from 1926 to 1957, the Adviser, as he became known, would go on to assume positions of power throughout the government, serving as like the head of the police, the head judge, had the final word on any decisions made in education, infrastructure, health, customs, trade, you name it.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And in his position as Adviser, Belgrave came to symbolize the power of colonial rule on the island. And he was, and still is, a very divisive figure both in Bahrain and in the UK. So yeah, so you know, what was this man’s connection to this flower in the first place that I looked to find an answer was in his diaries.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So for 30 years, he kept a personal diary. They’re a collection of over 2000 pages when transcribed, and these, like, personal entries, which the adviser meticulously kept from 1926 to when he was when he left in 1957 and only returned once, actually, after that. But what is so significant about this record is that it narrates a moment in Bahrain’s history, albeit his record is extremely biased, not to mention racist and sexist and very unpleasant. It’s an incredibly unique record in its description of a time that is either scarcely documented or intentionally censored in his diaries. Among the countless court hearings, police raids, custom house meetings, horse races, you find this man who loves to garden and for whom, clearly, the oleander is his favorite flower.

NASSER ALZAYANI: He mentions this flower, the oleander, 64 times in his diaries, and even named his horse Oleander. But it still wasn’t clear to me why this flower was named after him in Bahrain, and it was only much later, actually, that I found proof of this, where he confirms in his autobiography, Belgrave had asked the British Royal Air Force, the RAF, to fly in some oleanders from Basra in Iraq, which he had then planted and propagated. To this day, they can now be found, literally, in every corner of the island.

NASSER ALZAYANI: For me, the thing that really ties all of this together, and the most complicating detail in all of this, is the fact that this plant introduced by a colonial figure, which now exists in almost every park, every backyard lining the streets and highways, is extremely toxic. All parts of the plant are poisonous and, when ingested, it can be fatal. Contact with the plant can cause rashes and allergic reactions. So for me, this was the most perfect metaphor for the colonial legacy in Bahrain.

NASSER ALZAYANI: When I first began this project, my instinct was to write. I was reading so much of this diary, and much in the same way that the adviser kept his diary, I would keep a research log. The first iteration that I showed of this work that you see here included some 40 panels of diary, retyped diary entries, plus my research log, in kind of like this combination that explores all of the crazy coincidences and amazing finds that are uncovered by the diary, things that are like taking me to the Smithsonian where they’re digitizing thousands of plant specimens in a basement, to learning about how Belgrave commissioned a pearl merchant related to me somehow to source pearls as a gift for Queen Elizabeth’s wedding. Pearls, which were one of her favorite pieces of jewelry. And even at the funeral, I found that Kate Middleton had… was wearing them.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So, you know, following the oleander, and tracing it through Belgrave’s diary, I was able to uncover parts of Bahrain’s colonial legacy that had literally seeped into the soil. And this project was really a challenging one, because the material I wanted to work with, being the flowers, posed a problem because of their toxicity. I tried several things, but it just really just didn’t want to work. I was remembering a visit to Harvard some years ago, encountering the glass flowers, or the Blaschka flowers. So these like thousands of delicately fashioned, like, replicas of plant life. And you know, these are all displayed under, like these smooth, clear sheets of glass.

NASSER ALZAYANI: For me, it was these… these like simulacra, made in like this material that would never decay and probably outlast us, all that were still protected under these sheets of glass. We were unable to touch them, unable to smell them, we couldn’t hurt them, and they couldn’t hurt us. So like this was, this was kind of like my thought process. And so I wanted to create, not some kind of display, but I wanted the glass to become almost like this protective feature within this project, something that was like holding these plants, but also keeping you safe from them. And I had this idea of encasing the flowers in between two sheets of glass, firing them in a kiln, allowing the organic matter to kind of, like, burn off and leave a residue. And I had these grand plans, and then everything had to be shut down. I even found a guy in Bahrain who could do this for me, and had a kiln, but then I found out and I read about how oleanders also have this history of being extremely dangerous during forest fires because the fumes are also extremely toxic. So that… you know that put an end to that idea.

NASSER ALZAYANI: But I did eventually work with the team in Bahrain to start locating and collecting some of these flowers from across the island and pressing them and preserving them as records of this research. I was very much inspired by early botanical specimens and the beautiful ways that, you know, flowers and plants were collected and pressed, but I was also very much aware of the fraught history of the global plant trade. I found hundreds of oleander specimens that were digitized by the University of South Florida, coming from Iraq, to Mexico, Australia… For me, the Oleander became this great case study for a larger colonial practice of transplantation.

NASSER ALZAYANI: These were some of the specimens that I found that were through this digital archive, and I was really interested in presenting them in a way that could describe some of this movement. And so, like, I found that using a light box evoking images of, like, X-rays, and not only objects, but also bodies moving through X-rays as we travel across borders, was something that I really wanted to emphasize here as a result of colonial expansion, colonial practice. And really… like this idea of, like, collecting for pleasure, collecting for profit, and exerting power over nature.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

NASSER ALZAYANI: So this series of work, or works, are directly coming out of the research that I was doing with the Adviser’s flower and they began with the discovery of this enormous amount of digitized British documents, many of them confidential and were meticulously kept in colonial archives, both in India and in the UK. And some of the first records that I found were these, like simple logs that described kind of like the comings and goings of the Agency Garden in Bahrain. The Agency Garden being the British Political Agency that was set up in Manama. And, in this garden, it seems that this was the place that plants and flowers from all over the empire were imported and used to beautify the grounds, essentially, and to spread throughout Bahrain to beautify the country. And it was actually in these… in these records, where I first found evidence of the adviser, Charles Belgrave, introducing oleanders to different parts of Bahrain. So they had records of him, where, who, you know, he was not an employee of the Political Agency. He was, you know, again, an employee of the Bahrain government, but he would come and have very close ties to the political agents. Would come in and ask them to take cuttings of oleanders, seeds of oleanders, to be… to plant in other areas of Bahrain.

NASSER ALZAYANI: While studying these records, I was also spending a lot of time going back to Bahrain, taking a lot of photographs and documenting this plant throughout the island, not only in Bahrain, but also around the world. So in the last four years, I’ve photographed so many oleander plants, and I’ve amassed, like, a huge number of images. And as I was reading through these letters and these logs and secret, confidential intelligence reports, public announcements, requests for seeds, even a printing press, so that they could, like, counteract growing dissent on the island, I began sifting through the words and attempting to clarify the true meaning between the lines, so to speak.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And what emerged from this was a series of works that are reframing and retelling the found narratives in a way which kind of highlights the toxicity of British colonial practice and allows for this poison to really come through the pages. This has been, like, a really exciting, I mean… I’ve been working on this for about seven or eight months now, and since I started this new series, it’s been a really exciting way of going back to some of the ways of working that I really loved. So, you know, going back to 10 plus years ago, when I was saying my practice was mainly drawing-based: this was something that I really wanted to try again and really try to embrace. And so, using photography, using drawing, finding ways to, kind of like, selectively mask, you know, certain texts really, kind of like parse through all of the, you know, very flowery language in some in some cases, no pun intended but… But really to kind of, like, get to the root of… Sorry. But to get to the root of what is trying to what is being said.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So the British really kept, like, the best records. Like, if they did anything really well, they kept the best records. And it’s, you know, really kind of like backfired in this case, but you’ll find things like a bill sent from like the Water and Electricity Ministry Authority billing the agency for its use of water in the garden. Then the agency will get back saying, “Hold on, we’ve never been billed before. Why are you sending this now?” And you find this moment where some of, like, that truth is coming to the surface where, like, they had very special connections and so were able to kind of like, exist rent-free, in a way, in this place, and really use its resources without having to pay for anything, right?

NASSER ALZAYANI: And the Adviser was kind of at the center of this. So later on in the correspondence, they agree to wait for the Adviser to kind of decide what to do. And I think he was like, away on leave at that point. So they’re like, “Let’s put this on hold until he’s back, and then we can talk about it.” But really, again, like looking at photography, drawing, layering… I mean, the beauty I feel of the original records is just how layered they are with one document on top of the other and accumulates kind of like the age, not only of the paper, but also of how the materials they write with, and how the typewriters kind of like age over time, and add these different layers to these documents that you can you can begin to reveal and conceal.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And so again, I was here working with that text to highlight some things, even working with some handwriting to try to transcribe and do some of that early diary work myself, what I really enjoyed finding actually is kind of like through these compositions, ways of collapsing the past and the present, not only through these, you know, archival documents that are, you know, almost one hundred years old, paired with these images taken in the last five years, but also in the way that technology works, like I… you know, in this particular collage, after I made it, I immediately saw this connection to like how WhatsApp messages work and having like this conversation between two people be recorded with this beautiful background, recreating these correspondences in… In this way where you’re able to, kind of like see the log happening almost in one space, I found really fascinating. And then working with collage in a way where you have, within this two-dimensional space, some hint of a three-dimensional space beyond, through cutouts, through this kind of, like, surface, which, you know, I find again, like is almost like a window that you’re looking through.

GUIDANCE

NASSER ALZAYANI: I don’t work a lot in glass, but I think I can speak as someone who has a practice that is very material-based, and I think this can apply to a lot of different materials. So much of my work has a research component that usually takes a long time to really develop and coalesce into something maybe physical. And then, once it gets to that point, I think there’s always material exploration that I find actually reinforce some of that research.

NASSER ALZAYANI: In the case of the “Watering the Distant” work, I found that actually the research process didn’t necessarily lead me to a specific material but it was actually a separate kind of material exploration that eventually allowed those two things to meet in the middle. And I think that there’s no formula for that that I have found, but I do think that a lot of times, if you do practice, experiment, research and try to, like, uncover some of the stuff that you’re interested in that eventually there is some serendipitous moment where these things kind of come together. A lot of my work seems to come out of that kind of collision of seemingly disparate ideas and things I’ve learned to kind of work on a much longer timeline at a much slower pace. And I think that’s sort of worked for me.

NASSER ALZAYANI: I kind of exist in this periphery of the art world, like, not really in the commercial art world, also in education. So I don’t really have a lot of pressures, I would say, to like, produce work — at the moment at least — and so I’m able to kind of, like stretch that out and really allow for the material research as well as, kind of, like the historical research, let’s say, really take its time. For me, that’s really important. I really hate to rush things. And I think especially when you’re working with materials that require a lot of work and require a lot of time to be put into the making. I mean, I know how many hours it takes to actually work with glass. It really does require, kind of like a slower pace, a more extended timeline and I think everyone kind of finds their own sweet spot. So for me, it’s… it’s like a minimum one year to actually get anywhere. But then, you know, I think it allows me, allows for the ideas to marinate a bit. It allows me to reflect on what I’m doing. Very often I’ll have a certain approach, and I’ll have an idea in mind.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And that, you know, I’ll try to work towards, but then something comes in and redirects things, sometimes in much, you know, much more fruitful ways.

WORKSHOP QUESTION

HAILEY GIFFORD: I’m Hailey Gifford, a junior at Hastings College, and the question I have is: “How do you decide which gaps in the archive should be left open and which ones do you attempt to imaginatively reconstruct through the retelling of stories? How do you see through the official historical documentation to uncover the gaps in the archive?”

NASSER ALZAYANI: Yeah, a very good question, and one that I’m always thinking about, and one that I’m always asking myself both while I’m researching. But also, when I’m actually making the work and I’m making decisions while I work, I don’t think we really think about how history is made and written and kind of like made solid, in a way. For me, it’s like when I go to go to a museum and I read the history or description of an object, I always try to remind myself that this was written by a person who looked into the history of this object and then is framing it in a certain way. And there is a perspective, there is a point of view, and there are things that are included and things that are not included, even when it is official, historical documentation, there is always going to be bias there. It really depends on who’s writing it, why they’re writing it, who they’re writing it for. So I try to keep that in mind, and then also realize that when I’m making work about this, I am also adding my own history to the official record.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Because I am responding in a certain way, people might believe it as fact, others might not. Others might question it, particularly when there is very little historical documentation. So in a lot of the projects that I work with, there are these gaps that exist, and so I feel compelled to kind of respond to that, and through my making, I’m also adding to that record. So if there is a gap that exists, and then my artwork comes up to kind of like fill that gap, I do see that as very valid documentation of a history, and kind of like the the story of a place, an object, a person in time and so often I think about my work as an alternative primary record or secondary record, maybe, and kind of like a resource for other people. 

NASSER ALZAYANI: So I’ve actually, like, a lot of the research that I did for the Adhari work I’ve shared with other artists, because they were also interested in looking at it. So for me, the research aspect and the work come together as a package, and can offer inside this perspective on a moment in time. And I’m very interested in sharing that, like, that being accessible to other people, just in the same way that I went out and found whatever was accessible to me. I always think about it in that way.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And then when approaching actually, kind of like, you know, decision-making, when it comes down to, you know, after I’ve identified what this gap is and trying to figure out what that response is. It really depends. I mean, I think in the work — the Adhari work — creating these sand tablets, the whole idea was that I wanted the viewer to be able to insert themselves into this history as well.

NASSER ALZAYANI: So by… by attempting to learn the history and kind of like reconnect, or remember this, this place that is, you know, so fragile in a lot of people’s memories, you are adding your own recollections essentially to it, and allowing for that to take its own form within your mind. So in that work, I’m very much interested in having people create their own story fiction, because it really began that way with me. Like I still don’t know if my initial… my experience of that spring was real or not. So it feels very real to me now, because I’ve remembered it, and I’ve, like, told it so many times that I’ve maybe have lied to myself enough that it became real in other cases where I’m maybe working with, you know, actual official documents.

NASSER ALZAYANI: I’m, you know, very interested in kind of like the process of redaction, which, you know is, is very is something that we see to this day. I mean, it’s… Very much present. So this is a process that, you know, we’re very familiar with, and in a weird way, take for granted that it’s normal. But there’s also the kind of, like, the opposite of that. So there’s, there’s the revelation as well. So it’s really about working between these two things. So like figuring out what maybe can, like be redacted in order to to kind of, like, bring more attention to something else, maybe in, like, a positive way. I don’t know if that’s… that really works that way, but like, in some of the cases that I’m in, some of the documents I’m working with now, like I’m actually, like, redacting all of the text that is unnecessary. So like all of the filler words, and because taking out all of the words that don’t have any are not calling out something directly that should be known, but it’s kind of like just there to support so then you’re only left with the information that under normal circumstances, would have been redacted.

NASSER ALZAYANI: There’s no one way to do it. And I think it really depends on what material I’m working with, how available it is, how difficult it is to kind of even grasp or, like, think about, and then… Yeah, always remembering that the audience is always going to have the last word in that reconstruction. So you can present things, then when people come to experience it, it will change again in a lot of ways that you don’t expect. So that’s something that I would always keep in mind and document as well, if possible, because then you can again use that to inform your own work and maybe develop it some more, or also add, if your intention is to add to a record, you know, other people’s perspectives.

STUDIO TOUR

NASSER ALZAYANI: Maybe the best way to give a little bit of a glimpse into my practice and my process is to dive into some of the ways that I go about researching. Looking at books specifically is such a huge part of the work that I do, and I spend a lot of time finding, collecting and reading these books. And so it really takes a long time for me to build, kind of like the foundations for the projects that I work on.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Maybe I’ll start with this one. This is a book that I really enjoyed reading. It’s a book by Gareth Doherty, which is actually about Bahrain, and so it’s called “Paradoxes of Green.” And it explores essentially the green spaces in Bahrain and throughout history, and like, what the relevance of the color green is to people in Bahrain, it has a lot of ties to politics and modernization and how green spaces in general have been kind of disappearing, and so he maps a lot of that and the cultural significance of this color within this place that you would not expect to be very green.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Often I’ll be reading more than one book at a time. One would be maybe technical read, scientific read. I’ll always try to balance it with something that is a bit more narrative-based. This is another book called “The Wardian Case”. And this is a really excellent book by Luke Keogh that explores and traces this technology, how and where plants grow, and kind of like the colonial legacy that comes with.

NASSER ALZAYANI: This is a bootleg version of a book which I’ve, you know, I looked for for a long time and could never find online or in any bookstores. It’s probably because it has sensitive information, it might not be something that is very available. But I kept a lot of notes in this book. This is the Autobiography of Charles Belgrave, who was the British adviser to the ruler of Bahrain from 1926 to 1957 but this was actually where I found the kind of, like, definitive let’s say, evidence of him having brought the oleander flower to Bahrain. So he writes in in this page that I’ve highlighted, “It was about this time that I started making gardens, and I persuaded the RAF, the Royal Air Force, to bring from Basra in Iraq plants and flowering shrubs, especially oleanders, which for many years were called by the Arabs, ‘the Adviser’s flower.’ Now they are the commonest shrub in the place.” Yeah, and you can see he’s very proud of that.

NASSER ALZAYANI: We also have his personal diary, which is a daily log, essentially of his time. And so you can actually look at both of these and cross reference and see what is true and what is not. Maybe he is actually lying in the diary, and he’s correcting it here. I don’t know.

NASSER ALZAYANI: This is just called “The Pressed Plant”. I had this book on my shelf at home for a really long time, I mean, way before I even got into this project. I really like the idea, and I love the images of what I was finding in these books. Yeah, there’s even a section in the back that gives you instructions on how to produce some of these images and how to press plants as well. A lot of times I buy things and I don’t get to them for a few years.

NASSER ALZAYANI: This is a book from the artist Zarina Bhimji. It’s called “Lead White” and she, mainly through photographs, is looking at these colonial documents, mainly from Africa, but like really photographing them, very, very much up close, looking at the residue that is left in these documents and what they have to say. I mean, you can see all these really beautiful images of these documents that she’s taking. I was really lucky to see one of her shows in Sharjah a few years ago.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And another artist that I saw in Sharjah recently was William Kentridge. So this is one of his many books, and I have quite a few, just like looking at the way he works his process, especially when it comes to drawing and layering, and the way that the image kind of draws you in with these words, is something that I’m really fascinated by, and something that I’m always thinking about in my work as well. I was very lucky that I was able to go see this show, it was “The Head and the Load,” when it was in New York. And yeah, that for me was really a life-changing moment.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Over the years, I’ve also been collecting these books about Bahrain. So actually, even on the shelf, any book that I come across that I can buy I usually pick up. This one is in Arabic, “Bahrain: Civilization and History”, and goes through, kind of like it has some beautiful images…. Big book. Beautiful images of Bahrain from, you know, the early… I think the 1900s. You can imagine this is like giving you a sense of what Bahrain looked like when people like the Adviser were arriving in Bahrain. You begin to maybe piece together what life looked like at the time. But, yeah, this is just one example. It has a lot of photographs here that are really beautiful.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And then I have this book, which is by a historian, Nelida Fuccaro, and its “Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf.” And this is specifically about the city of Manama, the capital of Bahrain since 1800. Politics of the region but also very much the effects of British colonial interference, as well as, significantly, the discovery of oil, but really using those as a backdrop for, kind of, like, the nuances of how the people themselves were involved in nation-building.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And then finally, I’ll… I’ll end with maybe my favorite book out of all of these. And this is, this is a book of poetry by Bahraini poet Ali Abdulla Khalifa, which is titled “عطش النخيل” in Arabic, and that translates to “The Thirst of the Palms” — palm trees. And this is the book that actually has the poem “Adhari” here, which is the text that is on the sand tablets that I create. This is the poem that… Yeah, really like, what kind of, like, started it all. And maybe I’ll end just by reading the poem, and I’ll read it in Arabic, and then maybe I can translate a little bit of it. So the poem is called “Adhari”. Adhari is the name of the natural spring in Bahrain.

NASSER ALZAYANI:

عذاري عَذَارِي لي متى تَسْكَينَ ذَاكَ النَّخل لبعيد عَطَاشِه نِنْتخِي يَمّجٌ ونَرْفَعْ صُوْتِنا ونُعِيدُ نِشُوف الكيظْ عَيَّدْ بالنَّخَلْ واحْنا بَلَيًا عِيد عَذَاري لي متى بها السّابْ يَجْرِي المَاي من دُونِي؟ نِشَفْ رِيج العِشِبْ يا عيب تَرْكِ زَرْعج الدوني عَجَبْ عَكْس الوِفا تَعْطِينْ يا اهل الخيْر وَدُّوني.. شمالي العِيْن كِنْتُ يَمُها ورَاحتْ تَسْكَي اللي بعيد.

NASSER ALZAYANI: He directly addresses the spring as though it’s a person. So he personifies the spring and asks it, you know, “How long will you water those distant ponds?” He describes how he is thirsty, essentially, like wilting next to the spring and like raising his voice and asking and repeating, “how long will you water those distant ponds?” Those are just a couple of the first couple of lines. But I think… again, it doesn’t really translate exactly, but, but more or less, but, yeah, so this is, this is, like, one of my most prized possessions.

NASSER ALZAYANI: I was actually at RISD doing my MFA, and I was looking into his poetry, and I’d found it online, and, you know, was trying to get a hold of some copy. And so actually, I was on the phone with my dad and asked him if he could go check, like, a bookstore or something, to see if he could find a Bahrain. I told him who the guy, who the poet was, and what the book was, and he’s like, “Oh, I know this guy.” And so he, like, asked the friend, found the guy, and asked him for a book, and it was out of print. And so he got this book from the poet himself. I’ve… I’ve never met him, but I’m very thankful that he gifted this book to me, essentially, so hopefully one day I’ll be able to say thank you. That’s kind of like a selection of books that I have in my studio, just to give another dimension, I guess, to like the work and the practice.

MENTORSHIP

NASSER ALZAYANI: Rachel Berwick is probably my first, I guess, my first mentor once I had, like, decided to be an artist. You know, it’s been 10 years now, which is kind of crazy, but 10 years ago, in the desert, in Abu Dhabi, making my way to RISD to do my MFA, and then kind of everything that’s come out of that, and so much of practice and the things that I’m concerned with has come come out of conversations with you. And I think, I mean, I don’t think we’ve spoken much about your practice, but I think like knowing, knowing the things that you are concerned with as well really informed, kind of like my interest in how I view our natural surroundings and how fragile they are. I’m really happy to have you on this call with us.

RACHEL BERWICK: Well, it’s… it’s an honor and a privilege to be here. Yes, desert day! It was an assignment that came directly out of my own work and the way that I approach material and making and my own care about the environment, but materials that come from an environment like how they represent place and how materials attain meaning. Desert day was, you know, for me, just remarkable because I learned so much about the desert and what it means culturally and what it means materially, and what it is as an ecosystem, right? Endlessly fascinating to me. And so seeing you working there too was pretty remarkable.

NASSER ALZAYANI: And it’s really, I guess, kind of serendipitous as well, because we… We actually just went to the desert this last week as part of the SEAF program. So you know, I’ve been going back, carrying your torch a little bit into the desert every year. It’s crazy, but every time we go to the desert, there’s something different. I remember one year we went, and it was extremely foggy, and so, like, we actually had this eerie experience where we were out in the desert and couldn’t see more than maybe five meters ahead of you. Some years, like this past year, was extremely green, actually, like it had just rained, and so the desert was not very much a desert. Having that landscape as one that I was used to, and then coming to RISD and, you know, the landscape being completely different at the same time: I found it really funny that, you know, that’s when I started working with sand is when I had to actually go and buy it in bags.

RACHEL BERWICK: Yeah, there was some irony to that.

RACHEL BERWICK: I mean, I don’t want to speak for why you made the decisions you did, but honestly, I still remember when you interviewed for SEAF and the work that you showed. Tell me if I’ve got this right, but you were doing ink drawings about areas, places that struck you, that you remembered, right? And sort of… as a… as a means of accessing memory of places that had significance for you. And I still remember those drawings. And I think you know for you the way that that memory as a subject, as a process, as a really kind of a way of making work. No matter how much your work has changed, there is this continuity to purpose which just comes from your very, I think, your sense of being in the way you approach the world, you found a way to look at sand which supposedly is so familiar to you, but as if it was something completely new. I mean, you were researching it. I remember you were finding scientists who were right, researching sand worldwide, and trying to find out about it from this completely different perspective.

NASSER ALZAYANI: I actually forgot that I was doing that, but, but, yeah, it’s bringing a lot back, because I’m… I remember the moment when I found out the, like, differences in terms of like grains of sand, and due to erosion, and, you know, like sand from the desert is so different from sand, you know, that comes from, say, like, river banks. I mean, Bahrain is a tiny island, and it has a lot of people, and there’s only so much space. And so, you know, when you have this population that is steadily increasing, you kind of have to, like, push out into the water. And so, like, land reclamation is a really big issue, and it’s… And it’s not one that they can actually even do internally. So they can’t actually go into the desert and take that sand and put it in the water, because it would just, like, blow away.

RACHEL BERWICK: That’s really embedded in the way in which, and I think I speak for all of the faculty in the glass department, the way we teach, which is what I like to say, this idea of like, lobbing a question out there that you don’t know the answer to, and asking questions, not only of glass, but whatever material you’re working with, that the process of then making is one of discovering, and that’s a form of research, right? It’s material research through process, the process of making. But then there’s also material research, where you are getting the information right from whatever sources, book research will call it. And being able to pull the two together into a practice is not easy. I mean, it’s a mouthful, right? But it is what we all really hold dear at RISD Glass. It’s the way I love to teach, and it’s certainly what I’ve done in my own practice. So while I don’t explicitly talk about my own practice when I’m teaching, it is… I am speaking or teaching from my own practice, and I think more so when you were a student than before. And it took me a long time in my teaching to get to a point where I felt comfortable just bringing my practice into the teaching in such a kind of full throated way. Of course, I thought about moments in your education when you came to RISD too, and the class that I team taught with Tara Nummedal that was literally about how material attains meaning, and tying history and culture and place right to materials in terms of where they’re sourced and then how they change through use that making meaning. And the class that I team-taught with Tara was full evidence of that.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think back to the work that I made, which I did present in this talk, where I was making the pearls…

RACHEL BERWICK: I remember vividly. We’re on the outside of the door of your studio. We’re doing the crit. The whole class is there. Tara and I are standing there, and I think Mays might have run inside, and we were staying outside, and then we opened the door, and there you’re sitting there the Vermeer painting with your Carhartt jacket. And I just couldn’t stop laughing. I was like, “This is just perfect!” And the best part was you actually held character. You did not break out loud. You sat there while we all exclaimed and talked about it.

RACHEL BERWICK: And just going to say this part too, which is that you were part of a cohort at RISD that was really, a really lovely, lovely cohort. And I think that that’s like, it’s due to you and your cohort, but you were very much a part of that. And I just think that that was very special for everybody. And the same with SEAF, you know. So, that’s your humanity and your maturity — emotional maturity — is really important because it’s embedded in the way that you approach making the people around you matter, and that’s what your work comes from, and it’s what your process supports. So I just had to call out… call that out.

NASSER ALZAYANI: Well, I had… I had really good examples, so.

[laughter]

CLOSING THOUGHTS

EMILY LEACH: Thanks for joining!  If you enjoyed this lecture, check out previous GEEX Talks episodes featuring Nehal El-Hadi, Josefina Muñoz Torres, and Kris Rumman — exclusively available for subscribers in the GEEX Talks archive.

EMILY LEACH: The GEEX Talks lecture series features artists and researchers nominated by a community of glass educators, artists, and learners. For anyone seeking their path in this field, GEEX offers you a record of predominantly BIPOC and queer fine artists, craftspeople, scientists, historians, designers, community organizers, and more working with glass in traditional and unconventional ways.

EMILY LEACH: At its essence, GEEX is a grassroots project that has been bootstrapped together by a community that believes in the importance of this effort. Accordingly, GEEX relies on subscriptions, partnerships, and donations to make our public programs possible. GEEX Talks subscriptions are available to institutions (like colleges and universities) and individuals outside of academia (whether graduated, self-taught, or curious about glass). You can subscribe or donate to GEEX by visiting geex.glass/support.

EMILY LEACH: Many thanks to institutional subscribers for believing in the GEEX Talks project! Speaker honorariums are drawn from a pool of subscribers and supporters. Support for GEEX comes from viewers like you and makes all of GEEX programs and resources possible, including the GEEX Writing Center, BIPOC Community Table, Flame Affinity Group, and GEEX Educators Group.

EMILY LEACH: Thanks, as well, to our organizational partners. Organizational partnerships are intended for craft schools, glass schools, museums, cultural institutions, art service organizations, and truly all organizations interested in enriching their resources outside the bounds of their walls.

EMILY LEACH: This season of GEEX Talks—specifically the GEEX Shorts format—has been supported by the Wisconsin Special Projects Grant from Ruth Foundation for the Arts. The Wisconsin Special Projects Grant aims to build a robust and equitable arts ecosystem by investing in initiatives that rethink and reimagine past practices, bring an expansive range of voices into public and artistic discourse, and contribute to a more complex and abundant understanding of the histories, lived experiences, and futures of this region. GEEX is based in Madison, Wisconsin, the birthplace of American Studio Glass. With the support from Ruth Foundation for the Arts, GEEX reconnects Wisconsin’s glass history by revitalizing the narratives that define the field in a rapidly changing market, academic, and professional landscape.

EMILY LEACH: HIS Glassworks manufactures and supplies quality coldworking tools for the glass art industry. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, their team has well over three decades of coldworking experience. HIS Glassworks understands that your work leaves, but your tools live with you. To learn more, visit their website at hisglassworks.com.

EMILY LEACH: Following a multimillion-dollar expansion, Pittsburgh Glass Center is hotter than ever. Explore all of the expanded studios catering to artists of all abilities. Pittsburgh Glass Center continues to cultivate an inclusive and welcoming environment that encourages everyone, from the casually curious to the master artist, to learn, create, and be inspired by glass. Learn more at pittsburghglasscenter.org.

EMILY LEACH: You can follow GEEX on social media @geexglass on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about upcoming programs and events.

EMILY LEACH: Thanks to Hailey Gifford from Hastings College and Rachel Berwick from RISD for joining this episode. And finally, many thanks to Nasser Alzayani. And, of course, thanks to you for listening, sharing, and supporting GEEX Talks. Stay tuned!

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