Embers of Narratives
Raisan Hameed
(2023–ongoing)
Betonhalle
In Embers of Narratives, Hameed examines the traces of destruction left by violent conflicts in Iraq. The installation consists of suspended printed fabric depicting landscapes, houses, and figures sourced from screenshots found on Google Street View uploaded by various individuals across Iraq.
Through these digital remnants, the artist revisits places marked by war, political inaccessibility, and personal memory. Using thermal paper and thermal printing techniques, Hameed burns and scorches the paper before printing the images, creating fire-like interventions that partially erase the imagery beneath blackened abstract textures. The fire references the destruction of archives, libraries, and cultural memory in Iraq—materials lost through war and devastation. Unpredictability determines which visual fragments remain visible, disrupting and transforming the original image narratives. Through this process, destruction becomes a metaphor for the instability of memory, historical erasure, and the cyclical relationship between devastation and renewal.