In his first collaboration with Perrotin, Kevork Mourad presents the solo exhibition When Time Was Like a River at the gallery’s space in Shanghai.
An Armenian from Syria, Mourad has long been in dialogue with what came before. His process, devoid of reference images, is rooted in instinct, an improvisational dialogue of brushwork, printmaking, cutting, and drawing. His approach is less about re-creating the past than about allowing it to surface, unbidden, through the layered improvisations of ink and paint.
The exhibition in Shanghai unfolds in four movements: installation, work on paper, paintings, and cut-out paintings, each a meditation on lost civilizations, endurance, and the revealing architecture of memory. Among the cut-out works, When Time Was Like a River (2025), the exhibition’s eponymous painting, exemplifies Mourad’s ability to layer history within his compositions. A hand-cut, double-layered work, its back panel pays homage to the ancient city of Palmyra, a crossroads of Greco-Roman and Persian architecture, while the second layer warns of its destruction by the Islamic State. Once a vital hub along the Silk Road, Palmyra's remnants are now further eroded by war and time. In the painting, hands reach up to support the crumbling columns, an attempt to hold history in place before it disappears altogether.
The more you visit the memory, the more you blur the memory.
This sense of struggle, of perseverance in the face of collapse, resonates throughout the exhibition. In The Thorny Path (2025), another of his cut-out works, Mourad turns his attention to the penitential pilgrimage, an act of devotion made physical through suffering. The piece nods to Peregrinatio Etheria (The Pilgrimage of Egeria), a Latin text chronicling a Christian woman’s arduous ascent of Mount Sinai, where pilgrims, overcome with reverence and exhaustion, sometimes crawled on hands and knees. Mourad’s figures, contorted and clasping the ground, scale treacherous architectures in pursuit of the shrine that waits at the top of the canvas.
Encountering Mourad’s work in a Chinese context is particularly meaningful. Beyond shared traditions of calligraphy and ink painting, his architectural compositions echo Shanshui (山水, "mountain-water"), the classical Chinese landscape tradition. Shanshui is not about direct representation but about Daoist philosophy—mountains as conduits to the heavens, landscapes as energetic presences. Mourad’s paintings move in a similar current, replacing mountains with staircases as symbols of spiritual ascent. His staircases, seen in The Thorny Path (2025) and Echoes of Arches (2022), recall the narrow, arduous steps of Armenian monasteries, purposefully designed to test the faith of those who climbed them.
At the exhibition’s heart is Memory Gates, an immersive fabric installation completed in 2020. Suspended in space, it invites viewers to step inside, moving through corridors and archways that subtly sway with their presence. Here, history is not merely observed but inhabited. The work echoes Aleppo, Mourad’s childhood home, as well as ancient Babylon and the Ishtar Gate, populated with horses, roosters, and other animals. The script winding through the composition is a fusion of Arabic and Armenian, a language that is neither and both. The fabric itself recalls a device of protection: during the Syrian Civil War, vast sheets of cloth were suspended over streets to shield civilians from snipers.
As in Shanshui—where only black ink and paper are used—Mourad’s work speaks to a resourcefulness. His paring down of color, material, and fabrication is central to his practice. The works themselves are deceivingly nomadic. A work as monumental as Memory Gates, or his 6-meter-tall Seeing Through Babel in the Aga Khan Museum’s collection, looms over viewers with grandeur yet folds down into a small, lightweight square, like a handkerchief, small enough to fit into a backpack.
In Contemplation, a half-bird, half-man figure stands at the threshold of time, gazing at the remnants of lost civilizations. His wings hold the wisdom of the past; his eyes, the urgency of the present. He poses a fundamental question, one that carries throughout the gallery: How do we carry the beauty of the past into the present? How do we weave its vanished histories into today’s fabric before they slip away forever?
Born in 1970 in Qamishli, Syria.
Lives and works in New York City, USA.
Kevork Mourad is an Armenian artist based in New York City, known for his dynamic integration of painting, video art, and live performance. Mourad has exhibited at institutions across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, including Aga Khan Museum (2024), Asia Society Triennial (2020), Spurlock Museum (2020), Ismaili Centre London (2019), Tabari Art Space (2019), and Rose Art Museum (2017).
The only visual artist of the Silk Road Ensemble, Mourad’s collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma was featured in the documentary The Music of Strangers (dir. Morgan Neville). His visual storytelling and multimedia performances have earned him international recognition, blending cultural heritage with contemporary visuals.
In 2023, Aga Khan Museum acquired his large-scale installation Seeing Through Babel, adding to the growing number of institutions that hold Mourad’s work in their permanent collections, including the World Bank Group (Washington, D.C.), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), CAP (Kuwait), and the Spurlock Museum (Illinois).
His performances have been showcased globally in institutions and festivals such as the Spoleto Festival USA (2022), Korean National Opera (2020), National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (2020), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2018, 2012, 2010), Aga Khan Museum (2018, 2024), Walt Disney Concert Hall (2018), Elbphilharmonie Hamburg (2017), and the Dutch Royal Palace for the Prince Claus Foundation (2016), among others. He has received numerous fellowships and grants, including the Fountainhead Residency Fellowship (2024), a New York State Council of the Arts grant (2023), and the Robert Bosch Stiftung Prize (2016). He holds an MFA from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Art.
