Exhibiting artists: Sherko Abbas, Pio Abad, Jananne Al-Ani, Y.Z. Kami, Babak Kazemi, Saba Khan, Omar Mismar, Dima Srouji, and Akram Zaatari.
To perceive, according to Gestalt psychology, is to divide: to draw a boundary between figure and ground, between what is seen and what is overlooked. But perception is never still – it flickers and shifts, reshaped by context, culture, and attention. This exhibition takes this instability as its starting point, exploring how the figure-ground relationship, drawn from fields such as architecture, psychology, media, and literature, clarifies or distorts meaning within historical narratives.
From Nolli’s 18th-century black-and-white plan of Rome to the headlines we absorb and the narratives we tell, figure and ground form a hierarchical binary that structures what is made legible and what is pushed into silence. But what if the ground – what’s silenced, backgrounded, unbuilt or unseen – holds as much weight as the figure itself?
The artists in the exhibition engage critically with the process of historiography, exposing its imbalanced relationship between figure and ground, and demand that both be considered together. They examine this tension, unpacking perspectives on race, gender, forced displacement, and reclamation. Many give voice to the largely silenced narrative of the earth, which has endured the greatest violence under human systems of control and extraction. By examining these ecological injustices, the exhibition highlights the need to confront the environmental damage hidden beneath or above Earth’s ground.
Figure–Ground invites a critical interpretation of the hyphen within the title and its potential not only as a marker of division, but as a blur and friction-point. Here, boundaries loosen and binaries begin to fold. In this overlap, alternative readings of the past emerge. This reframing allows us to see the present not as fixed reality, but as shaped by what has been emphasised, silenced, or forgotten – opening space to question dominant narratives of the present.