b. 1982, UK
Navine G. Dossos is a visual artist based between London and Athens. Her interests include Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, image calibration, and aniconism (the absence of figurative representations of sacred or living beings). Drawing on the traditional techniques of Islamic art, classical painterly training, and the aesthetics of the digital age, her paintings emerge from a philosophy of the image that extends beyond the iconic and the decorative, into the political stakes of contemporary life. This is not the formal abstraction of western art history, but the development of a new informational language, which translates the patterns and relations of our interconnected world.
Duration, interaction, and communication form key contours of Dossos’s work, whether painting in public and in dialogue with audiences over many weeks (My TV Ain’t HD, That’s Too Real, Witte de With, 2015), or producing extensive series of paintings influenced by the unfolding of mediatized events (Converts, Van Eyck Academie, 2015; No Such Organisation, 2020). Her work often responds to a political sense of place, taking the form of murals and site-specific installations. There Is No Alternative (2019) at The Showroom, London became a site for a series of overlapping murals as well as for an archive and discussion about the UK Government’s anti-terrorism strategy. In Athens, a room-size painted installation at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art animated the city’s complex identity between East and West (Imagine a Palm Tree, 2016). The vast outdoor mural Echo Chamber at the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2016) reflected on the depiction of European converts to radical Islam.
She has exhibited and worked with various institutions, including The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial; SALT, Istanbul; The Delfina Foundation, London; The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha; Z33, Hasselt; Leighton House Museum, London; and the A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah. She is currently a member of the Substantial Motion Research Network.
