Sukaina Kubba

Gallery 1 housed the artist’s series Corners of Your Sky, which stemmed from a Senneh rug originating from present day Western Iran which Kubba encountered during a 2022 artist residency in the Atacama Desert. She had previously researched and emulated rugs from this region using various methods to trace and retrace their designs, creating ever increasing distance between the original object and its drawn likeness. Corners of Your Sky spans drawings on latex, embroidery on found plastics, and sculptural works produced with a 3D printer pen in coloured and clear filament.

Sukaina Kubba’s recent experimentation in producing work with materials derived from various natural and synthetic processes (latex, rubber, reclaimed plastic and PLA filament) led to rug-like, rolled textile and installation objects. This in turn prompted Kubba to research Persian rugs which she had encountered through family and domestic encounters, fictional stories and collections, seeking to transmit narratives of the travel, trade and acquisition of rugs. Her work seeks to invoke the history of their origins, extraction, manufacture and packaging; and the deployment of their textures and visual properties. Rugs – and textiles in general – more so than many artefacts, are intricately tied to a history of exchange and transport. It is in their nature to be rolled: they are nomadic units of architecture carried on the backs of horses, or in the bellies of shipping vessels, and unfurled to make familiar a home elsewhere. Kubba talks of the rugs that have followed her family and herself to numerous cities: Baghdad, London, Abu Dhabi, Montreal, Dubai, Glasgow and now Toronto. The Iraqi rugs in museum collections have followed a trajectory – from East to West – similar to that undertaken by the artist’s own family and the Iraqi diaspora.

A publication accompanied the exhibition, featuring newly commissioned texts by Montreal-based artist Swapnaa Tamhane and Glasgow-based writer Daisy Lafarge.