WORK






Palimpsests I


Palimpsests was first realized at AWAI in Venice, a site layered with histories of water, architecture, abandonment, and renewal. The installation unfolded through four stations: Lagoon, Courtyard, Dump Site, and Garden, each expressed through handmade incense and engraved holders.

Visitors moved through these stations as if walking across time: the pre-human ecology of the lagoon, a Renaissance courtyard marked by ritual and trade, the site’s later use as a construction waste dump, and its current life as a community garden. Scent, smoke, and material traces built an olfactory map that revealed how the space has been continuously overwritten yet never fully erased.

The work invited a multisensory encounter with place, asking visitors to breathe in its layered transformations, where decay, ritual, and renewal coexist.


Featured in Hide-and-Seek curated by Debora Morelli, AWAI, Venice, Italy

Dates: June 14-15 2025
























© SHAHIRA HAMMAD, 2025