untitled 2015 (Eau de RRose of Damascus)

Overview

untitled 2015 (Eau de RRose of Damascus) draws inspiration from a fourteenth-century model of a rosewater distillery by Al-Mizzi that Rirkrit Tiravanija encountered at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization. With its complex system of hand-blown vials emanating
from a pounded brass body, the distillery reminded the artist of Duchamp’s 1914 Bottlerack, and thus the work’s title makes reference to Duchamp’s alter ego, Rrose Selavy, and an assisted ready-made credited to her and Man Ray, the perfume bottle Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (1921).
In addition to commissioning an exact replica of the museum’s model, Tiravanija decided to enhance the object with function. Presenting the object within a frame of activities centred on this function, the work became a rosewater distillery housed within its own source – a rose garden planted in a design based on Arabic motifs. With an outdoor kitchen to which the artist has invited local chefs to prepare and serve rosewater-based concoctions inspired by family recipes from the Levant, the installation becomes a sensorial social experience. Transforming the gallery that overlooks the garden into a lounge area decorated with Persian carpets and Emirati furnishings, Tiravanija tasked local poets to create original poems about the rose, now calligraphed on the room’s walls.

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 12