Galerie Dominique Fiat
Kevork Mourad
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"Sailing to Nowhere"
“Sailing to Nowhere” brings together a new body of work inspired by my large-scale installations created for the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA). At the center of these works is the sail — not only as an object that moves a vessel across water, but as a fragile surface that absorbs history.
The fabric of the sail carries memory. It holds the breath, sweat, and silenced voices of those who were forced beneath it — the captive bodies whose labor powered the ships, whose names were erased, whose languages dissolved into the wind. The sail becomes both witness and archive. It remembers what official history has chosen to forget.
In this exhibition, the sail is not a symbol of discovery or conquest. It is a suspended skin of time — marked by absence, rupture, and endurance. Its threads echo the lives of enslaved people who propelled empires forward while being denied their own humanity.
Interwoven within this narrative is part of my own ancestral history. As Armenians, some of my ancestors were forced to convert, to take on new identities in order to survive. Their past was suppressed, their language muted,
their cultural markings gradually erased. Like the sail, their identities carried hidden layers — visible only through careful attention to what remains beneath the surface.
Sailing to Nowhere speaks of displacement without arrival. Of movement without destination. Of survival that requires transformation. The works invite us to consider how memory persists even when it is denied, how fabric can become flesh, and how erased histories continue to shape the present.
The sail, stretched and exposed, becomes a space where forgotten stories return — not as monuments, but as fragile presences carried by the wind.
- Kevork Mourad
Solo show of Kevork Mourad
From March 19 to May 31, 2026
Rendez-Vous
Friday 29 May 2026
Performance – Galerie Dominique Fiat
Sunday 31 May 2026
Closing – Dominique Fiat
75010 Paris, France 01 40 29 04 62 dominiquefiat.com
The gallery
Dominique Fiat is a gallery owner based in Paris in the 10th arrondissement, and develops all kinds of artistic
projects in various mediums.
Her transdisciplinary view has allowed the discovery of young talents from the beginning as Camille Henrot or
Hicham Berrada with multiple forms of expression.
By taking an interest of extra-western scene and particularly from Africa and MENASA, Sue Williamson and Anita Dube have been exhibited at the gallery simultaneously with the Centre Pompidou. Anita Dube was also a brilliant curator of Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2018-19.
In 2017 Dominique Fiat initiated and organized at the Grande Halle de la Villette "Afriques Capitales", an exhibition of the contemporary African art scene of about fifty artists,- from William Kentridge to Leila Alaoui -coupled with a festival of music, dance and performance.
From the partnership established with the Fondation Vuitton was born what everyone called the "African Spring" in Paris. Today, Dominique Fiat affirms more than ever, through the defense of committed artists, its interest for links between Africa, Asia Minor with the Mediterranean Sea and any subject related to it, by privileging the opening and the dialogues in order to avoid any notion of confinement or ghettoization.
Gallery artists
Malala Andrialavidrazanana, Rut Blees Luxembourg, Hannah Collins, Roxane Daumas, Emo de Medeiros, Laddie John Dill, Anita Dube, Safâa Erruas, John Goto, Itvan Kebadian, Nicola lo Calzo, Chantal Regnault, Vivian Van Blerk, Sue Williamson
