Nur
Folkestone Triennial
2021

A collaboration with artists HoyCheong Wong and Simon Davenport Nur was a public installation and redevelopment project with the Folkstone Mosque for the Folkestone Triennial, the UK’s largest outdoor art festival. 

The project resulted in a public art installation which was part of the Folkstone Triennial. The artwork was a 6m high pentagonal lantern, glowing at night, built at the front of the mosque. It was adorned with coloured panels, some of the patterns on these were developed through making workshops with the chil- dren who attended the mosque classes.

The lantern, titled Nur, served as a beacon and a sign board for the mosque and gave it a new visibility and presence in the town as well as bringing it in as a participant in the triennial festival.

At the heart of the project was an extensive consultation period with the mosque and the preparation of an architectural proposal to redevelop and extend the mosque to provide more and better facilities for the congregation.

The design of the building was also informed by the children’s workshop, where their drawings were referenced to explore a new visual language to represent the Islamic identity of the community.

This was an experimental collaborative project which explored whether a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship between the ‘partcipant’ (the mosque), and the institution (the Triennial and the artists) was possible. The Triennal who commissioned the artwork, also funded the architectural services and so the outcome was not only the creation of an artwork, but it was also to build the capacity of the mosque as a community facility through support, advice, navigating bureaucracy, and design.