What a long strange year it has been. I am so happy to be able to go to museums again.

Rayyane Tabet’s current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art addresses the four reliefs of Tell Halaf that have ended up in the MET’s collection. The exhibition explores Tabet’s family’s connection to the reliefs. Tabet’s great-grandfather Faik Borkhoche worked as a researcher for the excavation. Borkhoche was given a 65 foot rug by the Bedouins of Tell Hala that is the subject of Tabet’s installation “Genealogy”

The rug was to be cut into 5 equal sections, one for each of Borkhoche’s children. Then it was to be divided again in equal section for each subsequent generation.As time passes sections get smaller and smaller creating  visual fractions of the genealogical history of the artist’s family.

Susan Happersett