Dala Nasser: Cemetery of Martyrs

In September 2026, Peer presents **Cemetery of Martyrs,** a major new co-commission by Beirut and London-based artist Dala Nasser, produced in collaboration with **Nottingham Contemporary** and **KM21, The Hague, Netherlands**. Nasser's new body of work comprises a canopy of dyed and marked fabrics, layered and draped over a site-specific wooden structure and an accompanying text work. **‍** **‍**Nasser's work explores history, displacement and community through a relationship with abstraction and alternative forms of image-making. She integrates sound, performance and film in her work, but remains quintessentially a painter, working with the medium's most elementary materials: fabric, pigments, stretcher bars and mark making. ‍ **Cemetery of Martyrs** departs from Nasser's past works that explore the cultural and political histories of Southern Lebanon and wider West Asia; a region imprinted with the remnants of ancient societies, landscapes and geology. Whereas Nasser's previous work has drawn on historic subjects and sites, ranging from the tragic love story of mortal Adonis and goddess Aphrodite, the 600-400 BCE tomb of King Hiram, or most recently, three tombs of Noah in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, her new commission transforms Peer's exhibition space into a symbolic graveyard. ‍ This new body of work is the outcome of over two years of research and field trips, guided by conversations with historians, her communities and collaborators. Using the process of frottage (the technique of taking a rubbing from an uneven surface), Nasser worked in many geographic contexts to collect charcoal grave rubbings from the gravestones and sites of seminal artists and intellectuals from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, the United Kingdom and the United States, who all, at some stage of their lives, spent time in Beirut, Lebanon. Included in the work are Etel Adnan, Inji Aflatoun (also Efflatoun), Mahdi Amel, Ghassan Kanafani, Khalil Sakakini, Raif Khoury, Laila Shawa and Anbara Salam Khalidi, amongst many others. ‍ The resulting collection of graves represents the lives of cultural figures from the mid nineteenth century (specifically **The Nahda**, a cultural and intellectual Arab Renaissance movement) to the present day, who all used their art as a tool to fight for independence and freedom in times of political dominance and occupation. Each life represented in the installation has, through their own artistic and intellectual work, shaped the notion of true sovereignty in Western Asia. ‍ Within the installation, Nasser layers cyan blue and charcoal-marked sheets of cloth amongst black and green mourning fabrics that she has dyed and marked with shells, seeds, ash, and crushed malachite. The charcoal rubbings transcribe the surfaces of known graves, while the cyanotype treated fabrics act as a visual representation of those whose graves are unreachable or unknown by featuring the person's name transcribed in Arabic using various scales and legibility. A booklet accompanies the exhibition, offering an individual obituary for each of the artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, historians, journalists, and others included in the cemetery. Written by Nasser in collaboration with translator and researcher Rayyan Abdelkhalek, the booklet acts as a way of commemorating each life and legacy beyond the physical cemetery. ‍ **Cemetery of Martyrs** initiates a reflection on the challenge of interpreting the extreme and unceasing violence of the present moment, and invites audiences to reckon with their own role in forging new pathways of thought and action. Nasser's cemetery creates a collective space to gather and reflect on the legacies of people who were steadfast in their commitment to freedom and cultural sovereignty; a graveyard to mourn, learn, and reaffirm the power of culture, art and humanity to connect us to histories of resistance and renewal.