Passing Pari-daiza: Enclosure As Voyage

Exploring how spatial confinement creates room for spiritual and psychological journeying, 'Passing Pari-daiza' unpicks Alia Hamaoui’s hybrid visual language to juxtapose two distinct arenas; the car voyage and the Islamic paradise garden. Through visual research, archival documents and ai generated imagery, the publication maps these enclosures to consider their shared state of limbo and perceived limitlessness.

Contributing texts from Aga Khan professor Nasser Rabbat and reinterpretations of John Urry’s writings on weightless travel offer a sociological, historical and architectural perspective, underpinned by an expanded rumination on Hamaoui’s practice from curator Róisín Tapponi.

Alia Hamaoui (she/her) is a British-Lebanese artist, organiser and a member of Gobyfish Collective – a platform for dialogue, collaboration and exchange that operates at the intersection of art and food. Hamaoui (b. 1996) received her BA (hons) painting from camberwell college of arts in 2018. She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows in the uk and internationally. Hamaoui is a founding member of Collective Ending HQ, an artist-led studio & gallery complex in Deptford, South East London, where she has organised the group exhibitions ‘but not blue’ (2022), and ‘seam, strata, séance’ (2021).