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I S SUE 111 01 ‘Turn Me into A Flower’, Sukaina Kubba exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts 02 Late Guests: Angry Bird For Alys, 2024, handdrawn PLA filament, Sukaina Kubba 03 Enclave Exclave (31–32 Oakville, Ontario), 2023-24, hand-drawn PLA filament, Sukaina Kubba 03 form “regions” like enclaves,’ she says. Kubba’s process begins with drawing. She traces rug designs to create a formal distance from the original, then scans and processes the work as 3D prints or sculptural forms made with PLA filament that allows her artworks ‘to move like textiles’ and be rolled like rugs. When she unrolled stored ‘rug fragments’ from her series Corners of Your Sky, she discovered the filament had warped, adding movement and meaning. Enclave Exclave inspired new works for the exhibition with motifs derived from flora and fauna patterns in the Stoddard-Templeton carpet archive. ‘They are the last works for the exhibition I made’, she says, and so she titled them Late Guests. Exploring the history behind the rug that inspired Enclave Exclave and Late Guests informs understanding of the artist and her oeuvre. Born in Baghdad and raised in Abu Dhabi, Kubba moved with her family to Montreal. She spent seven years in Glasgow, then moved to Toronto where members of her extended family live. The rug is in her uncle’s house in greater Toronto. ‘I’d never seen a rug quite like it,’ she told the Toronto Star on the occasion of the opening of GTA24 at MOCA Toronto, where Enclave Exclave is on view through June 2024. Her uncle’s aunt gave his family the rug in 1950 when his family moved house in Baghdad. ‘We’ve had this carpet for seventy-four years,’ the uncle says, ‘but I assume that it’s not less than 100 years old.’ Where rugs originate, how they are rolled, transported, packaged and displayed are some of the factors that intrigue Kubba. History of ownership (provenance) is usually lost with rugs, but the workshop or tribal origin of Persian rugs can be determined from design and materials. Oral family history records the rug’s origin as Tabriz, Iran, while the rug’s pictorial elements have attracted comparison to Armenian rugs. Early modern diasporic mercantile trade was reliant on Armenians. Their global hub was New Julfa, the Armenian enclave in Isfahan in presentday Iran. Tabriz also had a sizeable Armenian enclave, and both Persian cities were renowned for their urban rug workshops. Was there overlap and influence between Armenian and Persian weaving communities? Perhaps. Persian rug authority Dr Hadi Maktabi supports the family’s oral history and timeline. The rug, he says, is unequivocally a ‘Tabriz carpet of the Reza Shah period circa 1925–1940’. Diaspora is significant to the story of the Kubba family rug. Whatever its origin, the rug crossed the border from Iran and sailed the ocean with an Iraqi family to start a new life in Canada where its narrative ‘enclaves’ inspired the young Sukaina Kubba. sukainakubba.myportfolio.com

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