May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones
May 6–November 22, 2026
Venice
Italy
The National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia presents a public program extending the ethos of “many hands” that underpins Dana Awartani’s May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones. Beginning with two new performance-based commissions in Venice, responding to the installation, the program continues with conversations in Saudi Arabia in January 2027, with a publication on the artist’s practice to follow.
Curated by Antonia Carver, with assistant curator Hafsa Alkhudairi, Awartani’s installation comprises 29,221 sunbaked clay earth bricks created with thirty-two Saudi-based artisans, referencing mosaic motifs from places of everyday life and historical significance. The public program expands on the work’s central questions: how knowledge is transmitted through making; how traditional craft practices inform contemporary artistic production; and how storytelling, poetry, and performance preserve forms of cultural memory that cannot be held in objects alone.
For the Pavilion’s closing weekend, two new performance-based works commissioned by the curatorial team bring Saudi practitioners into dialogue with Awartani’s monumental floor installation. Conceived in direct response to its materiality, themes, and concerns, the works will be presented through recurring performances on November 20 and 21, daily at 1 and 3pm, and open to all Pavilion visitors.
Saudi artist and writer Mohammad Alfaraj, whose practice uses storytelling to explore collective memory and the relationship between people and their environments, presents one of the two newly commissioned performances.
The second commission is by Saudi researcher and writer Nouf AlHarthi, whose practice centres on textual experimentation. Working with poetry and sound, she considers how language and listening shape our sense of memory and place. AlHarthi will be accompanied by Saudi sound artist Nadine Lingawi, whose practice combines environmental textures with electronic elements to explore the relationship between sound and space.
The program will continue with sessions taking place in Saudi Arabia in January 2027. These will include conversations between Dana Awartani, Antonia Carver, Hafsa Alkhudairi, and invited interlocutors, extending the artistic and curatorial collaborations behind the exhibition through dialogue with the Saudi cultural community, considering living craft traditions and how material knowledge is sustained across media and passed between generations.
A fully illustrated publication, commissioned by the Visual Arts Commission, edited by Antonia Carver, and published by Kaph Books will follow in January 2027. The first comprehensive publication on Awartani’s practice, it features contributions by Nouf AlHarthi, Hafsa Alkhudairi, Saira Ansari, Antonia Carver, Uzma Z. Rizvi, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, alongside a conversation around the production of the artwork between Dana Awartani, Antonia Carver, and Hafsa Alkhudairi.
May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones remains on view through November 22, 2026. Commissioned by the Visual Arts Commission, one of 11 sector-specific commissions under the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the exhibition marks Saudi Arabia’s fifth participation at the Venice Biennale.
For press enquiries, please contact Scott & Co: Talia Williams, talia@scott-andco.com and Mia Hart, mia@scott-andco.com.
