“Insofar as Enkidu symbolizes a nature corrupted – and even decimated – by humanity, I see his death here as an allegory for our dying planet. And Gilgamesh is all of us, humanity in its hubris, contemplating our reckless crimes against the environment, which we have turned to waste.”

Publication: “Elegiac Musings: Amin Alsaden on Ali Cherri at the Swiss Institute, New York,” Texte zur Kunst (27 October 2023).

Keywords: art, contemporary, artist, Ali Cherri, exhibition, solo, tragedy, death, graves, tombs, destruction, dying, elegy, mud, clay, bricks, soil, earth, dirt, ground, terrain, fragile, warrior, soldier, fighter, sculpture, figure, face, mask, body, installation, statue, video, channels, film, Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia, epic, poem, odyssey, king, monarch, Uruk, Ur, mortality, Babylonian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Enkidu, primitive, human, nature, culture, civilization, punishment, Gods, transgressions, slaughter, Bull, Heaven, Humbaba, guardian, Cedar, Forest, shadow, light, theater, stage, drama, dramaturgical, museum, artifacts, objects, archaeological, antiquities, spoils, wars, armed, conflicts, memento mori, creation, genesis, history, terrestrial, celestial, human, divine, archaic, primordial, museological, quotidian, sophisticated, elementary, violence, environment, Anthropocene, climate, change, degradation, collapse, extraction, excavation, exploitation, natural, resources, consumer, capitalism, colonialism, displacement, habitats, alienation, Merowe, dam, Africa, Sudan, Beirut, Lebanon, Southwest Asia, Middle East, Manhattan, New York, US, global, planetary, international

Image: Swiss Institute, Ali Cherri