Tarik Kiswanson’s practice delves into rootlessness, metamorphosis, and memory. The artist often looks into the adaptation one has to undertake after displacement and the ramifications of war. In Nest (2024), his first public artwork, a white, cocoon-shaped sculpture hovers weightlessly on a building façade in Abu Dhabi’s city centre. The work takes up the artist’s interest in levitation as both psychological metaphor and physical phenomenon. Its oblong form, a leitmotif in Kiswanson’s practice, recalls transformative states in nature (egg, chrysalis, seed) and alludes to refuge and becoming, embodying a nascent state of possibility. Nest underscores the need for reconstruction and renewal amid the ruptures of history, while echoing the city’s ever-changing nature.

paad.ae/biennial/artworks/nest