The Language of Symbols

Forms and markings carry with them intrinsic symbolic meaning, a meaning that has evolved from prehistoric times into the spoken language and script of our civilizations. We carry these meanings in our lives communicating through a prism of what has come before us and what is yet to come.

This show is an exploration of the varying ways of interpreting markings, letters and shapes that carry meaning beyond their actual forms.

Lebanese artist Nayla Romanos Iliya rediscovered the Phoenician alphabet as a vital thread in her cultural heritage—an ancient script made of simple, symbolic shapes that once revolutionized human communication. In transforming its characters into bronze sculptures, she creates visual narratives through playful yet deliberate compositions that echo the rhythm of contemporary language and resonate with the memory of a distant past. This thoughtful process has led to recognition, with several works from her Phoenician Alphabet series acquired by public institutions, underscoring their cultural and artistic significance.

Lana Matsuyama’s work embraces the transient yet continuous nature of art-making and seeks to expose the creative process as a cyclical practice of doing and undoing, as mirrored in manmade environments and nature. She is interested in the inherently unfinished, imperfect, and impermanent properties of objects. Wrapped up in these concepts and drawing upon her previous studies in the intersection of art and psychology, she explores themes such as shifting identities and ever-evolving symbols and forms in the collective unconscious and experiments with metamorphosed and ephemeral materials.

Maya Sanbar is a multi-disciplinary award-winning artist, curator, and filmmaker with a practice centred on storytelling. Through installation, sculpture, painting, poetry and film, her work explores physical and emotional borders and boundaries, with an intention to bridge cross-cultural understanding. Her pieces in this show highlight all that unites us, from ancient times to today, and our connections to the world around us. Using sacred geometry, nature and poetry, her paintings and glass wall pieces conjure elements of a puzzle manifesting itself through colour and shape.

Hanna ten Doornkaat’s process of repetitive mark-making with graphite pencils, mixed media, recycled materials, and craft-oriented techniques such as textiles and fibers, all reflect the passage of time and the evolving nature of human expression. Her work embraces a perfect imperfection, inviting the viewer to consider how layers of meaning, history, and personal experience are written and erased over time. In this context, the work reflects how symbols evolve, just as language and technology continuously reshape how we communicate.

Frequency, colour, play, rhythm, symbol, text and biomorphic form are mapped out and echoed in the alchemical compositions by Laurence Watchorn. Created on un-stretched canvas with rounded corners, they release the artist from the geometric rigidity of his immediate environment in pursuit of the soft, round and organic. They form biomorphic and code-like structures mapped alongside symbolism and poetry, in an animistic relationship with the world.

Symbolism and its linguistic codes, visible or invisible, inhabit our everyday lives. They are sacred moments within our fast-paced existence, that carry within them keys to unlocking deeper meaning.

- Maya Sanbar

SELECTED WORKS