Artist Simone Fattal has opened her first major commission in a UK art gallery.
The show, named Finding a Way, at Whitechapel Gallery in London, includes works that span several years, and is intended to be understood as one piece in a reflection on conflict and history, Fattal says.
Staging and scenography are crucial to the work. Fattal has organised the ceramics and works on paper down a central aisle, in which five standing figures appear almost to be walking away from the viewer as he or she enters the room. Four are made in clay, the material with which Fattal has worked for decades.
The Master, a bulbous, friendly-looking fellow, is cast in bronze, with a dark patina covering his bumps and bulges – a recasting of a favourite sculpture of Fattal’s from 1989, which broke apart in its original clay form.
At the end of the gallery is a ceramic flower, mounted on to the wall and opening up in frilly tendrils.
“The men represent us all walking through life and looking for something,” she says. “It's like when Gilgamesh was looking for the flower of eternity. He finds it, and the sky opens up.”
Fattal’s work bats between epic references and opacity, as if she wants to leave space for the viewer to make his or her own judgments about the pieces. Contrast structures the entire exhibition: the calm, classical layout with its main axis, balanced by low-slung works hugging the horizon on either side. Or the luxuriant amorphousness of the clay and its tactile, handworked feel, versus the specific grounding references of Gilgamesh, ziggurats, and the Syrian souqs.
She describes her ceramics as “haunted” by her memories of Syria – “When you leave somewhere at a young age, you memorialise it,” she says – but their luminous coloured glazes evoke California, almost as an index of Fattal’s own peregrinations.
Fattal was born in Damascus in 1942, grew up in Beirut and then studied philosophy in Zurich. She returned to Beirut to work as a painter, and moved to California in 1980. There, she founded The Post-Apollo Press, an important imprint for radical publishing, and took up making the ceramics for which she is best known.
“When I arrived in California, I did not do any paintings,” she recalls. “We were in such a beautiful landscape in Marin County – just stupendously beautiful. I had nothing to add to it. So I started then doing sculpture, and in sculpture came up all the memories of archaeology, heroes and history.”
Fattal recently resettled in Paris and, as if inspired by Europe’s gloomy skies, she began to paint again, in expressive, thick brushstrokes that echo the energy and organicity of her ceramics.
Whitechapel Gallery’s presentation shows a selection of these newer works on paper, drawing out the show’s central theme of maps and route-making. A suite of etchings was inspired by battlefield engravings from the 17th century that Fattal encountered at the Louvre in Paris: maps produced for the military of Metz and Nancy, France’s north-eastern frontier.
“I took from those engravings this elongated shape, which totally spoke to me, and I made them as long as the press could do,” she explains. “I started to reconstruct going through the Hammadiyeh, towards the Umayyad Mosque. Others show how you enter the city, but only how it was; it is not the same route today.”
She paired these long, quasi-topographical maps with ceramics she had made earlier of clouds, their rounded humps rhyming with the curve of the Syrian hills.
The other works show aerial views of Damascus, in rational, schematic drawings that give off little of the chaotic openness of her mottled and torqued ceramics. She even brings this movement towards unrest to her model of a ziggurat, whose mathematical progression of levels sags, as if warped by memory.
“I consider the ziggurat to exist deep in the consciousness of our travellers,” Fattal says in an interview published in the show’s catalogue.
The exhibition's focus on memories and journeys reflect a life of constant change – one inflected by the political events of the past century, above all the Lebanese Civil War.
And it's applicable to so many members of different diasporas. Are you the same person in all the places you live? And how do you remember your earliest identity, removed in time and space?
In her catalogue interview, Fattal compares the epic journey of her five walking figures to that of an everyman, seeking to get married, gain professional success, attain stature: Gilgamesh in a suit with two children and a car. But the accumulation of objects as her five men move towards the flower of immortality redirects attention to all they pass by. Fattal's ceramics are of figures on the move, carrying with them memories of what they left behind.
Finding a Way is on view at Whitechapel Gallery in London until Sunday, May 15, 2022.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mubadala World Tennis Championship 2018 schedule
Thursday December 27
Men's quarter-finals
Kevin Anderson v Hyeon Chung 4pm
Dominic Thiem v Karen Khachanov 6pm
Women's exhibition
Serena Williams v Venus Williams 8pm
Friday December 28
5th place play-off 3pm
Men's semi-finals
Rafael Nadal v Anderson/Chung 5pm
Novak Djokovic v Thiem/Khachanov 7pm
Saturday December 29
3rd place play-off 5pm
Men's final 7pm
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Founder: Dr Ali Al Hammadi
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: AgriTech
Initial investment: None to date
Partners/Incubators: UAE Space Agency/Krypto Labs
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Director: Louis Theroux
Starring: Daniella Weiss, Ari Abramowitz
Rating: 5/5
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Why are asylum seekers being housed in hotels?
The number of asylum applications in the UK has reached a new record high, driven by those illegally entering the country in small boats crossing the English Channel.
A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.
Asylum seekers and their families can be housed in temporary accommodation while their claim is assessed.
The Home Office provides the accommodation, meaning asylum seekers cannot choose where they live.
When there is not enough housing, the Home Office can move people to hotels or large sites like former military bases.
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What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.
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RESULTS
Catchweight 63.5kg: Shakriyor Juraev (UZB) beat Bahez Khoshnaw (IRQ). Round 3 TKO (body kick)
Lightweight: Nart Abida (JOR) beat Moussa Salih (MAR). Round 1 by rear naked choke
Catchweight 79kg: Laid Zerhouni (ALG) beat Ahmed Saeb (IRQ). Round 1 TKO (punches)
Catchweight 58kg: Omar Al Hussaini (UAE) beat Mohamed Sahabdeen (SLA) Round 1 rear naked choke
Flyweight: Lina Fayyad (JOR) beat Sophia Haddouche (ALG) Round 2 TKO (ground and pound)
Catchweight 80kg: Badreddine Diani (MAR) beat Sofiane Aïssaoui (ALG) Round 2 TKO
Flyweight: Sabriye Sengul (TUR) beat Mona Ftouhi (TUN). Unanimous decision
Middleweight: Kher Khalifa Eshoushan (LIB) beat Essa Basem (JOR). Round 1 rear naked choke
Heavyweight: Mohamed Jumaa (SUD) beat Hassen Rahat (MAR). Round 1 TKO (ground and pound)
Lightweight: Abdullah Mohammad Ali Musalim (UAE beat Omar Emad (EGY). Round 1 triangle choke
Catchweight 62kg: Ali Taleb (IRQ) beat Mohamed El Mesbahi (MAR). Round 2 KO
Catchweight 88kg: Mohamad Osseili (LEB) beat Samir Zaidi (COM). Unanimous decision
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
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The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
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With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
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The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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The biog
Age: 59
From: Giza Governorate, Egypt
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Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
