Exhibition Launch Party: Nour Jaouda and Dan Lie

Join us to celebrate the opening of our autumn exhibitions, Nour Jaouda: Matters of time and Dan Lie: Sleeping Methodologies. Discover new site-specific installations from internationally renowned artists, before dancing the night away as local favourites Noods Radio take over Spike Island with an all-night programme of DJs. Custom cocktails, local beers, and alcohol-free options available throughout the evening in our on-site café-bar Emmeline.

SCHEDULE

Exhibition preview, 6–9pm

Noods DJs, 8–11pm

Spike Island is proud to present Matters of time, the first institutional solo exhibition by Libyan artist Nour Jaouda (b.1997, Libya). Jaouda’s new commission at Spike Island will be her most ambitious to date and continues her ongoing exploration of the fluidity of cultural identity.

Jaouda’s new installation for Spike Island takes inspiration from the ‘Khayamiya’, an intricately patterned textile that is created through the ancient craft of appliqué and applied to the interior of tents. Functioning as both ornament and shelter, the ‘Khayamiya’ tent often serves as a temporary ‘third space’, erected within Cairo’s dense urban areas for moments of gathering, such as funerals, Ramadan rituals and Eid celebrations. For Jaouda, the intimate tentlike environment she creates within Spike Island’s monumental gallery is also a memorial space, where viewers are invited to come together, sit and reflect. Drawing on memories of botanical landscapes, sewn onto the tent are deconstructed shapes of indigenous plants and trees that have once been uprooted. Within this sheltered retreat, Jaouda constructs a space to mourn an absent landscape.

Spike Island presents a new commission by Dan Lie in Autumn 2025. Informed by ancestral knowledge systems, spiritual ontologies and contemporary ecological frameworks, Lie’s commission will celebrate natural cycles of transformation and the interdependent exchanges that structure ecosystems. Drawing from personal experiences with death, including the loss of their father during the COVID-19 pandemic, their work highlights the intimate yet expansive coexistence of diverse beings, acknowledging our shared and continuous participation in the processes of living, dying and decomposing.

PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS

Nour Jaouda: Matters of time is produced with generous support from Foundation Foundation, The Elephant Trust, Union Pacific, and the Nour Jaouda Commissioning Circle: Alia Al-Senussi, Maria Sukkar, Lukas Zueger-Knecht, and those who wish to remain anonymous.

Dan Lie: Sleeping Methodologies is produced with generous support by the Henry Moore Foundation.

IMAGE CREDIT

Spike Island Open Studios. 2025. Photography by Lisa Whiting

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