Ramzi Mallat displays ‘Not Your Martyr’ at V&A South Kensington for London’s Art Fair season

The year 2025 is quite a significant one for Lebanon, which makes the prominent positioning of an installation by the London-based Lebanese artist Ramzi Mallat at the V&A South Kensington’s Medieval and Renaissance Gallery especially timely and important.

Titled ‘Not Your Martyr’ (2023) and marking Mallat’s institutional UK debut, the artwork was unveiled at the V&A for London Design Festival (LDF) and will remain on show until 19 October 2025, at a notable time in the London Art calendar, when key industry events, including 1-54 African Art Fair and Frieze Art Fair, among others, are well under way across the city.

A highly poignant and intimate piece, Mallat’s installation was created as a commemorative memorial to honour the victims of the 4 August 2020 Beirut Port explosion which claimed over 250 lives, displaced thousands and devastated the city.

In 2025, Lebanon not only reflected on the five-year anniversary of this still raw tragedy, but also looked back further to 1975, when the Civil War began. And, like so much of his practice, Mallat’s decision to highlight both calendar dates is carefully considered.

‘Not Your Martyr’ speaks of the fact that just as tragedy is indiscriminate, grief can be collective and seeking justice a unifying force. To strengthen these messages, Mallat’s installation takes the form of vibrantly coloured glass pieces shaped as ‘ma’amoul’ (معمول). These sweet delights reflect the region’s shared food heritage since they are enjoyed at both Easter and Eid festivities in the Levant, as Mallat explained.

“I specifically chose these pastries as the sole figurative element of this memorial because of the interfaith property of ma’amoul,” he said. Mallat’s choice of glass - a luminous medium whose properties include both fragility and strength - is also symbolic, reminding us that grieving is a journey rife with contradictory and conflicting emotions for those who mourn both individually and collectively. Meticulously created using a labour-intensive process that required patience and precision, the pieces also display a deep reverence for traditional craftsmanship which Mallat sees as an important aspect of Lebanon’s cultural legacy. One, he noted, that has perhaps been overlooked when it comes to marking the civil war.

“Monuments for the Lebanese Civil War were never built; instead, ruins were covered over by neoliberal reconstruction to bury contentious and divisive histories,” he said. “In a context where official memory remains complex and contested, this work serves as a ‘counter-monument’, offering a quiet homage to these uneasy anniversaries.”

Indeed, while garnering attention on the international art scene, Mallat’s work inevitably resonates powerfully within Beirut’s dynamic cultural landscape - a city that embodies perseverance, tenacity and adaptation amidst ongoing challenges.

Fittingly, Mallat’s solo exhibition earlier this year, titled ‘Suspended Disbelief’ and held at Takeover Space in Beirut, explored the tension between belief and doubt through an installation in which the motif of the evil eye - a primordial symbol used to ward off malevolent forces – provides the overarching theme. Deeply embedded in the folklore and collective psyche of the Mediterranean region and beyond, this symbol was reimagined as both a safeguarding and destabilising force, reminding audiences of the way the evil eye is open to various interpretations.

“This exhibition marked something of a turning point for me,” Mallat reflected. “Flying back to Lebanon with people disillusioned by the regional conflict there, it felt timely to recontextualise a conversation about the evil eye as a concept that cohesively connects ancient history and contemporary practices.”

Significantly, one key sculpture shown in Beirut and from Mallat’s Constellations of Protection (2023-ongoing) series will also feature in Artscoops upcoming auction, titled ‘Modern & Contemporary Middle Eastern Art’, which runs from 7-9 October 2025. Completed in patinated bronze, ‘Constellations of Protection XIII’ takes inspiration from ancient artefacts found in the ‘Eye Complex’ of Tell Brak in Syria. Like the other pieces in the series, it merges ancient archetypal forms and contemporary sculptural language, reflecting Mallat’s approach to cultural memory and protective rituals.

A multidisciplinary artist, Ramzi Mallat is based between London and Beirut. He holds a BA in Fine Art from Lancaster University and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art. In 2022, Mallat was featured on Forbes Middle East’s ‘30 Under 30’ list, and in 2024, he was shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

Mallat’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at venues including the UNESCO Palace, Cervantes Institute and Takeover in Beirut, as well as P21 Gallery and Marie Jose Gallery in London.

‘Not Your Martyr’ - his work currently on show at the V&A - is displayed alongside an installation by the Lebanese artists Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem titled ‘Debris of Text and Eyeglasses’. Both works use the perceived fragility of glass and the intimacy of the everyday to reflect on the impact of the Beirut explosion - a fact noted by Rachel Dedman, the V&A’s Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East.

“I am proud to bring together two works by Lebanese artists at the V&A, in a display marking five years since the Beirut Port explosion,” she said. “Both installations use humble objects - the ma’amoul eaten at Easter and Eid, and the spectacles blown from people’s faces by the force of the blast - to capture the human impact of the event and its aftermath. Connected via the materiality of glass, they each approach memory at an intimate scale, offering a counter to formal monuments.”

‘Not Your Martyr’ is currently on show at V&A South Kensington’s Medieval and Renaissance Gallery until 19 October 2025 to coincide with 1-54 African Art Fair and Frieze Art Fair. The display is supported by London Design Festival (LDF) and the V&A’s Jameel Programme, curated by Rachel Dedman.

For more information on ‘Not Your Martyr’ at the V&A click here.

For more information on the artist Ramzi Mallat click here.

View the catalogue for Artscoops’ Modern & Contemporary Middle Eastern Art auction here.