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dakhkhan painting of a phoenician statue smoking a cigaretteView full ↗

Dakhkhan

acrylic and gold leaf on canvas · 2026

55 × 65 cm

A statue stands still, the Phoenician form against a backdrop of time. Layered, weathered, rusted; the tyrian purples of wealth faded, the green of cedar forests now a distant blur; the rust of dried blood peeking through the blurred consciousness of generations passed. It stands in an impossible present: a monument to a civilization that has no accolades, no remnants of their glory; stuck in the wreckage, testifier. There's no comfort in the knowledge of what was. The smoke dances as it cuts across the canvas, gesture and statement: the cigarette a desperately futile attempt to manage the stress of what has passed and what is yet to come. A commentary on what it means to persist, to consume and be consumed within a political ecology that demands testimony, watching while you buckle carrying the unbearable weight of survival. dakhkhan (دَخَّنَ): to smoke.