NIKA Project Space in Dubai presents A Shroud is a Cloth, a new exhibition by Honduran fibre artist Adrian Pepe, which marks another collaboration between the artist and the gallery. On display until 17 May 2025, the show explores themes of memory and material transformation through the use of woollen textiles, salvaged from buildings destroyed in the 2020 Beirut Port Explosion. The art practice revolves around the interplay of materials, cultural landscapes, and ecological intimacy, fostering a sensitive, poetic dialogue between transformation and resilience.
The show examines themes of memory, healing, and the delicate interplay between destruction and renewal, and challenges rigid boundaries between art and nature, labour, and performance. At the heart of the showcase is a 200-square-meter woollen textile — once part of a wounded, damaged heritage site in the centre of Beirut. The exhibition delves into the ideas of repair and the traces left by personal histories. The displayed works, drawn from a single source, range in scale from the intimate to the monumental.
Wool serves as the essential material in reconstructing rituals through process and transformation. Debris extracted from the textile has been preserved, capturing landscapes within the fabric. Gathering and reassembling these materials give rise to new compositions, reflecting the artist’s meditation on reconstruction and renewal. The show also contemplates ecological transformation and fragility.
Pepe investigates the intersections of material and meaning, creating a lyrical dialogue on transformation. Over the years, he and NIKA Project Space have collaborated on multiple projects. At the Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023, Adrian Pepe presented Utility of Being: A Paradox of Proximity, an installation staged in the city’s historic slaughterhouse. Using Awassi sheep pelts, the work examined themes of material reuse within a specific cultural context, reimagining waste as a medium for artistic reflection.
As the artist said in the interview with the Sandy Times, “My work is a sort of reanimation of memory and process not necessarily related to the preservation of craft. For me, craft, these pre-industrial modes of production, are a way of interacting with the animal and manipulating its biomass by use of the body. In manipulating the biomass of the animal, you enter a conversation with it; you are both communicating something.”
In 2024, the artist unveiled Entangled Matters 2.0 in Beirut, a public installation that transformed the façade of Villa des Palmes — a building marked by the port explosion — using hand-felted wool produced in Lebanon. This project was part of UNESCO’s BERYT initiative, which invited artists affected by the blast to propose cultural works for revitalizing impacted neighbourhoods. NIKA Project Space also played a key role in this effort, reinforcing its commitment to fostering artistic innovation and supporting creative resilience.
About the artist
Adrian Pepe (b. 1984), who resides in Beirut (Lebanon), obtained a BFA (2008) and MFA (2010) from Savannah College of Art & Design (Savannah, GA, USA). His practice revolves around material transformation, intertwining nature and culture to create objects that serve as tools for discourse on materiality, cultural landscapes, and present conditions.
Pepe has displayed his art pieces in various exhibitions, such as Entangled Matters (solo) (Agial Gallery, Beirut, 2021); Dubai Design Week (2021); Harvest: Mushroom Explorations, Beirut Design Week (2016); Hair Explorations: Adulio Pitaksalok (solo) (Non-Fiction Gallery, Savannah, GA, 2013); and Seoul Design Fair (South Korea, 2010). The artist’s accolades include the SCAD Alumni Atelier Grant and the Fiber Arts Network: FELT Fiber Transformed Award.
To get more information about A Shroud is a Cloth, please go to the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in visiting I’ve Got to Know You Now We May Never Meet Again, Nigerian artist Sola Olulode’s solo show.
