Sara Shamma Unveils The Tower Tomb of Palmyra:
A Monumental & Immersive Pavilion of Syria at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
At a time marked by the destruction of architectural heritage across the Middle East, the pavilion confronts the erasure of cultural memory, while advocating for the restitution of antiquities looted during the Syrian war (2011–2024), and the preservation of shared heritage.

Sara Shamma presents The Tower Tomb of Palmyra for the National Pavilion of Syria at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, the exhibition is curated by Yuko Hasegawa and is on view from 9 May – 22 November 2026, in the open-air courtyard of the Università Iuav di Venezia, Cotonificio campus.
The exhibition explores Syria’s cultural heritage and Palmyra’s diverse histories, while also advocating for the restitution of antiquities looted during the Syrian war (2011–2024). Conceived at full scale, the installation takes the form of a monumental freestanding tower inspired by the funerary architecture of ancient Palmyra – originally built between the first and third centuries AD, the tower tombs were later destroyed during the war. Its interior unfolds as an immersive circular environment shaped by painting, light, sound, and scent. Reimagining one of the ancient world’s most iconic architectural forms with striking contemporary resonance, the pavilion marks a significant moment in Syria’s international cultural engagement following the war.
“The Tower Tomb of Palmyra is not about mourning the past. It is about drawing strength from history in order to imagine the future.” – Sara Shamma, Artist
“Conceived prior to the global rupture of the pandemic and realised amid the renewed violence of war in the Middle East, the project unfolds within a continuum of interruption, displacement, and persistence. It is at once a work of art, an archaeological echo, and a contemporary testimony to the fragility of human existence. This work transforms memory into a living experience, where absence becomes presence, and where the past continues to resonate within the present.” – Yuko Hasegawa, Curator

Historical context
At the heart of the project lies Palmyra, one of the most significant cultural crossroads of the ancient world. Between the first and third centuries AD, it flourished as a crossroads of Greco-Roman, Aramaic, and Arab cultures, where communities of different religions and backgrounds coexisted in harmony, tolerance, and mutual respect. Among its most distinctive architectural forms were the funerary tower tombs, multi-storey structures built for extended families, rising prominently above the desert landscape. Inside, rows of loculi were sealed with sculpted funerary reliefs: portraits of the deceased that conveyed not only likeness but status, belonging, and collective lineage. These towers were not simply places of burial. They were spaces of memory and presence, where the boundary between the living and the dead was conceived not as separation, but as continuity. The destruction of its monuments in recent years represented not only the loss of architectural heritage, but an attempt to erase cultural memory itself. Hundreds of funerary portraits were looted and dispersed, severing objects from their historical and spatial context.

The pavilion
Rather than reconstructing the lost monument, Shamma reinterprets it as a contemporary artistic environment. The structure unfolds into a circular, immersive interior composed of large-scale figurative paintings, including a central multi-panel composition evoking the ancient motif of the funerary banquet, forming a continuous surrounding field that envelops the viewer. Here, the ancient and the contemporary coexist. The figures, while rooted in the visual language of Palmyrene funerary portraiture, are modern and psychologically charged, with some scenes exploring the fragility of human existence.
Light is carefully orchestrated to heighten intimacy and perception, while an original sound composition evokes the atmosphere of Palmyra’s desert landscape. A subtle fragrance, developed in collaboration with a traditional perfumer in Damascus, also fills the space. The result is not an exhibition to observe, but a space to inhabit, where memory is encountered through sensation as much as through image.

Public programming
A series of talks, video presentations, and cultural events will take place across major Syrian cities throughout the duration of the Biennale, expanding the pavilion’s engagement beyond Venice into a wider national context. Syrian students from universities across Italy will also be invited to a talk and presentation on the pavilion, offering insight into its conception, research, and design process. This initiative is developed in collaboration with the Università Iuav di Venezia (University Institute of Architecture of Venice), which focuses on education and research.

Credit Information
SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC
The Tower Tomb of Palmyra
Commissioner: Waseem Abd Alhameed, Director of Fine Arts at the Syrian Ministry of Culture;
Curator: Yuko Hasegawa
Exhibitor: Sara Shamma
Venue: Cotonificio campus, Università Iuav di Venezia (University Institute of Architecture of Venice), Dorsoduro, 2196. Press contacts:
Zara Doshi and Izzy Richings at Pelham Communications
zara@pelhamcommunications.com / izzy@pelhamcommunications.com
Vernissage dates:
6 – 8 May 2026
Exhibition dates:
9 May – 22 November 2026
Pavilion opening times:
11AM – 7PM

Project, Context, and Concept
The Tower Tomb of Palmyra is a large-scale immersive installation conceived by Syrian artist Sara Shamma for the National Pavilion of Syria at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Rising fifteen metres into the open Venetian sky, the structure reimagines the ancient funerary towers of Palmyra, monuments that once defined the desert horizon and stood as enduring markers of memory, identity, and continuity, before their destruction during the Syrian war.
Installed in the courtyard of the Università Iuav di Venezia (Cotonificio campus), the pavilion asserts a powerful vertical presence within the urban fabric of Venice, restoring, if only temporarily, the silhouette of a lost architecture. Its exterior evokes the material and proportions of Palmyrene stone towers, constructed through contemporary modular techniques that allow the structure to be relocated, carrying with it the possibility of return.
Yet this is not a reconstruction. It is an act of transformation.

Palmyra: History and Meaning
Palmyra, situated at the heart of the Syrian desert, was one of the most significant cultural crossroads of the ancient world. Between the first and third centuries CE, it flourished as a centre of exchange linking East and West, where Greco-Roman, Aramaic, and Arab traditions and religions converged to form a uniquely hybrid civilization.
Among its most distinctive architectural forms were the funerary tower tombs, multi-storey structures built for extended families, rising prominently above the landscape. Inside, rows of loculi were sealed with sculpted funerary reliefs: portraits of the deceased that conveyed not only likeness but status, belonging, and continuity within a collective lineage.
These towers were not simply places of burial. They were spaces of memory and presence, where the boundary between the living and the dead was conceived not as separation, but as continuity. Scenes of banquets and familial gathering reinforced this idea, suggesting an enduring social life beyond death.
Their destruction in recent years marked not only the loss of architectural heritage, but an attempt to erase cultural memory itself. Hundreds of funerary portraits were looted and dispersed, severing objects from their historical and spatial context.
It is from this condition of loss that the present work emerges.

The Pavilion: Architecture and Experience
The installation is structured as a freestanding tower, approximately fifteen metres high with a ten-by-ten metre footprint, accessible to visitors as an interior environment.
The exterior presents a restrained, monumental form, solid, silent, and vertical, echoing the archetypal language of Palmyrene tombs. Subtle golden lighting reinforces the impression of desert stone, allowing the structure to shift between presence and apparition as light changes throughout the day.
Upon entering, the experience transforms radically.
The interior is conceived as a cylindrical, immersive space composed of two concentric tiers of large-scale paintings by Sara Shamma, forming a continuous surrounding field. These works reinterpret the ancient loculus not as carved stone, but as living presence. Figures appear at once intimate and distant, confronting the viewer directly while remaining suspended within an ambiguous spatial condition.
The upper walls dissolve into darkness, creating a sense of infinite vertical extension, as though the tower continues beyond its physical limits. Light is carefully controlled, focusing attention on the painted surfaces while leaving the surrounding architecture in shadow.
The environment is further shaped through sound and scent: an original auditory composition, developed at the studios of the Syrian National Film Organization, evokes an ancient desert atmosphere, while a subtle fragrance, conceived by the artist with a traditional Syrian perfumer in Damascus and produced in Venice, envelops the space, carrying notes of desert air, wild herbs, sun-warmed stone, and a trace of incense recalling sacred and funerary interiors.
Together, these elements transform the pavilion into a total sensory environment. The visitor does not simply view the work, but enters into it.

Painting and Presence
At the core of the installation are the paintings themselves, monumental figurative works that bridge two millennia of human experience. While inspired by Palmyrene funerary portraits, the figures depicted are unmistakably contemporary. They possess lifelike gazes and shifting materiality, while at times their hands extend beyond the pictorial surface, projecting into space and creating a three-dimensional presence that reaches toward the viewer.
In this way, the work collapses temporal distance. The ancient and the present coexist within the same visual field, suggesting that the fundamental conditions of human existence, mortality, memory, and the desire to endure, remain unchanged across time.
A central multi-panel composition evokes the ancient motif of the funerary banquet, historically associated with continuity between life and afterlife. Here, however, the scene is reconfigured. It resists historical closure, oscillating between celebration and suspension, presence and absence.
Throughout the installation, gestures recur: hands reaching outward, bodies partially emerging or dissolving, figures positioned at the threshold between image and space. These gestures establish a direct relationship with the viewer, implicating them within the work’s field of meaning.

Concept: From Destruction to Re-Imagination
The Tower Tomb of Palmyra does not seek to reconstruct what has been lost. Instead, it reactivates its meaning.
The destruction of Palmyra becomes the conceptual ground of the project, not as an end, but as a condition for transformation. Through painting and spatial experience, the work proposes a different form of preservation: one that exists not in material permanence, but in memory, perception, and shared experience.
At its core, the installation addresses a set of universal questions:
• How does memory persist after destruction?
• What does it mean to encounter the past as presence rather than history?
• Can art create a space where loss is transformed into continuity?
By situating these questions within an immersive environment, the work moves beyond representation. It becomes an experiential condition in which viewers are invited to confront their own relationship to time, mortality, and collective memory.

Aims and Cultural Positioning
The pavilion operates simultaneously on multiple levels:
• As a tribute to Syria’s cultural heritage and the historical significance of Palmyra
• As an artistic response to destruction, displacement, and the fragility of human existence
• As a call for cultural responsibility, including the restitution of looted antiquities
• As a statement of renewal, marking Syria’s return to the international cultural stage through a focused, ambitious, and globally positioned project
At the same time, the work resists being confined to a national narrative. As articulated through its curatorial framework, it engages with universal human conditions: memory, loss, resilience, and coexistence, placing the Syrian experience within a broader global context.

Presence and Continuity
The Tower Tomb of Palmyra stands as both structure and experience, where absence is transformed into presence and memory into a living condition. It does not seek to reconstruct what has been lost, but to rearticulate its meaning through space, image, and perception.
Within this environment, temporal boundaries begin to dissolve. Past and present coexist, not as separate moments but as continuous states, unfolding through the encounter between the work and its viewer. What once belonged to history re-emerges as something immediate, perceptible, and shared.
Rather than offering resolution, the installation sustains a state of continuity, between destruction and renewal, visibility and disappearance, the individual and the collective. In doing so, it affirms the capacity of culture to endure beyond rupture, and to reappear, transformed, through new forms of experience.

Palmyra and the Memory of Portraiture
The conceptual and spatial impetus for the installation derives from the tower tombs of Palmyra, dating from the first to third centuries CE. Within these structures, rows of loculi were sealed with sculpted bust-length reliefs, images that, despite their formal restraint, conveyed individuality, social standing, and a sense of participation in a collective afterlife. These figures exist in a state of suspension: neither wholly alive nor wholly dead, but poised within an enduring presence.
For Shamma, Palmyra is not an abstract historical reference but a formative memory. As a student, she repeatedly visited the National Museum of Damascus, where a subterranean reconstruction of a Palmyrene tomb allowed her to encounter these reliefs in situ. She sketched them obsessively, absorbing not only their formal language but their existential force, their silent insistence on presence across time.
This early encounter would later intersect profoundly with her artistic trajectory. The destruction of Palmyra during the Syrian war transformed memory into loss. Yet in Shamma’s work, destruction does not signify absence; rather, it becomes the very condition for re-imagination. The tomb is not archaeologically reconstructed but painterly reconstituted, an experiential and psychological environment that reactivates what has been erased.

Between Rembrandt and Ruin
Shamma’s practice is shaped by a singular convergence: archaeology and painting, the Middle East and Europe, memory and technique. From an early age she engaged deeply with the work of Rembrandt, developing an acute sensitivity to light, shadow, and the expressive density of darkness.　Her artistic training in Syria involved rigorous copying of canonical works, often from low-quality reproductions. This process was not merely technical but interpretative: she reconstructed painterly logic from fragments. When she later encountered original works at the Louvre, she was struck by how closely she had approached them through imagination alone.
This experience continues to resonate within her practice. Shamma moves fluidly between hyper-real precision and painterly dissolution, often deliberately obscuring her own virtuosity. Drapery, flesh, and surface are rendered with exquisite detail, only to be disrupted, scraped away, overpainted, or dissolved into abstraction. This tension between construction and erasure mirrors the instability of memory and history themselves.　In her work, chiaroscuro becomes something more volatile: not merely a modulation of light and shadow, but a metaphysical condition. Figures emerge and dissolve simultaneously. Light does not illuminate so much as it burns—flickering across surfaces, exposing the vulnerability of the body.

War, Displacement, and the Body
The Syrian war constitutes a decisive rupture in Shamma’s life and practice. Born in 1975, she was an established artist in Damascus prior to 2011. Yet the intensification of violence, bombings whose reverberations resounded even at a distance, became inescapable. Missiles struck the outskirts and increasingly the city itself. Unable to acclimatise to this relentless condition, she fled with her children to Lebanon, carrying what works she could. After three and a half years, and as Lebanon itself grew unstable, she relocated to London in 2016, where she lived for eight years.　Reflecting on her time in Lebanon, she remarked that her concerns with life, death, and dissolution intensified immeasurably. The people she encountered, their eyes, their lives, their hopes and desires, entered her work as presences rather than subjects.
War, in her account, is not an event but a pervasive condition, one that infiltrates thought, emotion, and bodily experience. It irrevocably transforms the lives of those who endure it, rendering them fundamentally distinct from those who live without conflict. As this text is written from the relative safety of countries untouched by war, the artist herself remains unable to leave Damascus due to airport closures (in March 2026). The question of how such realities may be shared remains unresolved.
Shamma’s response is not documentary. She does not depict events or individuals directly. Instead, she engages with the psychological and corporeal transformations produced by war, the residue of experience. As she has noted, the suffering of others can neither be fully understood nor faithfully reproduced. Yet it can be responded to.　This response assumes a distinctive form. Rather than painting others, she paints through her own body. Many works take the form of self-portraiture, not as expressions of identity but as sites of translation. The self becomes a medium through which the pain of others is refracted, where personal and collective trauma intersect.